A Practical Examination of the Law of Ideality
by ketren
Summary: COMPLETE. Gen. Post-movie. In the midst of attorney fees and appeal dates for her father, Abigail Callahan meets the boy and robot who saved her life. Hiro isn't thrilled with her request - but at the end of the day, he needs a lesson in letting things go. Sequel to Malignant Butterfly Infestations.
1. Part One

**Warnings:** Mild swearing on occasion.

 **Disclaimer:** I don't own Big Hero 6. I just wrote this story.

 **POV:** Alternates between Abigail's and Hiro's perspectives.

 **Sequel:** This occurs after the movie and is a sequel to my other story, Malignant Butterfly Infestations: A Case Study. It's entirely possible to read this one without reading that if you want, but it does occur chronologically after and make brief references to things from that fic.

 **.**

 **A Practical Examination of the Law of Ideality**

 **Part One**

 _._

 _Abigail_

It's the slowness of everything that gets to her. She walks at a toddler's pace now, eats her food like she has hours to spare, brushes her hair more sluggishly than the spread of planets across the galaxy. She can't help it. Her traitorous limbs always shake and falter until she can barely muster the strength to dredge her way through a simple task.

 _There's probably some kinda irony in it somewhere,_ Abigail thinks, pausing on the side of a brick building to wheeze a little. It doesn't help that the streets of San Fransokyo are notoriously hilly, with raised beds and low trenches that seem designed to irritate her. If she weren't so stubborn, she'd take the cable car. But it isn't her style. Not the girl who once climbed Aconcagua on her own, without the advanced respirators they're selling for mountain climbers these days. Not the girl who had run marathons and triathlons practically since birth, whenever she wasn't working with Alistair and her father's team on their innovations in robotics. Abigail Callaghan isn't the type of girl to slow down for anything.

 _Except when I don't have the choice_.

Abigail discards that train of thought as she straightens, wiping sweat from her forehead and into her hair—which isn't exactly how she wanted to present herself today. She heaves a breath, smoothing the bottom of her dress, feeling almost silly out of the training clothes and practice suits she's worn for so long. It's a noncommittal sort of plain blue dress that seemed to fit the occasion, nothing particularly fancy. Her hand slips into the pocket almost automatically, and her fingers brush the worn slip of paper, its edges soft as tissue.

It still seems insane to her that it had been so easy to wheedle the address from one of the reporters who'd covered her story. Not that she needs to check the number now: she knows the address of the Lucky Cat Cafe by heart, mostly because she'd studied the slip of paper like it might tell her everything she wanted to know if she stared long enough. But it makes her feel better to have the scrap of paper on her, useless or not.

Pushing herself back into a slow trudge, Abigail examines her surroundings. The buildings are not much like those in the area she calls home, a spacious neighborhood on the cliffs that overlook the bay. Her own house, huge and well-kept and once shared with her dad, seems empty in comparison to the bustle she sees here. Where her home is monochromatic and manicured, these buildings burst with color. There are streaming flags and dangling banners proclaiming sales and openings, balloons twirling in the breeze, low thrums of electric bikes motoring up the steep hillside, children hunched in a circle over their holographic card games in the alleyways.

The burgeoning crispness of another San Fransokyo winter, mild as always, fills the air that Abigail sucks into her lungs. It's been a long time since she's been so exhausted. Her legs ache somewhere deep in the muscle, a shaky, buzzing vibration that makes her feel like insects have crept into her flesh. _It's normal to feel_ some _pain every now and then, considering what your body has gone through,_ her physical therapist had told her cheerfully yesterday morning, staring down as Abigail sweated profusely after a two-minute jog.

"I'll show you _some pain_ ," Abigail mutters to herself, ignoring the mildly startled gazes of a passing couple. A streetcar brimming with passengers drifts past her, climbing the hillside as easily as a balloon floating into the air.

Abigail follows. A minute or two farther up, the hill comes to a plateau on which sits a busy intersection, the crossroads bordered by a spectacular array of stores. As she pauses again to catch her breath, she watches a handful of pedestrians stream into the antique shop at her side. Diagonally across from her is a tiny corner drugstore—do they really even make them that small anymore?—and across the way is a dry-cleaning shop, a cafe, and a bookstore.

She peers more closely at the cafe, one of the area's classically old-fashioned homes that must have been retrofitted into the new power grid at some point in the last half-century. With its curved windows and odd, pointed roof—almost like a castle spire—it blends seamlessly into the neat rows of similarly haphazard-looking houses lining the street at its back. Nothing glaring marks the building as a shop instead of a simple residence, except the presence of a scribbled menu on the framed chalkboard standing out on the sidewalk and the gold lettering in the window: _Lucky Cat Cafe._ From where Abigail stands across the street, the power lines for the streetcar are woven through the air between the buildings like some giant spiderweb. It should have been ugly—heaven knows the neighborhood association in her area of town would have pitched a fit at the thought of the wires cutting through the geometric silhouettes of their homes—but it isn't. In fact, Abigail is surprised to find the whole scene almost charming.

 _Which makes this whole meeting thing a shit ton more difficult._ It would have been easier, maybe, if this Hiro Hamada kid lived in a stuffy neighborhood like her own, one filled with stoic, pretentious neighbors who keep track of favors owed as carefully as they do their finances.

But he doesn't. His home—because he lives in the upstairs part of the shop, she imagines—looks cozy and a little timeworn, with warm lights filtering from the cafe lanterns inside.

She's never met him, not personally. But he is, by all accounts she's been given from the police, the hospital, and her dad, a good kid. The kind of kid who risks his life to save a woman he's never met.

Abigail sighs irritably, wishing her job were an easier one—or at least less despicable—but she isn't the type to wallow in self-pity for long. _Anyway, it'd be stupid to go back now,_ she reminds herself stubbornly. And if there's one thing Abigail hates, it's looking foolish. She'd gotten _that_ from her dad.

Still, as she crosses the street and comes near enough to hear the fluid buzz of conversation wafting from the door of the cafe, she can't help but pull up the mental image she's created of "that nice boy," thinking coolly, _I wonder if he'll hate me for this._

.

 _Hiro_

"Are you actually listening to me?" Gogo asks, breaking off from her tirade to glare balefully at Wasabi. Hiro, balancing precariously on his knees atop the cafe chair, takes the opportunity to swipe her notebook, which features, as always, the most diligent notes of anyone in their Systems Engineering class. As distracted as she is, Gogo doesn't notice the theft, and Hiro flips through a few pages to scan her writing.

"Nope," Wasabi replies. He doesn't look up from where he sits hunched over his own laptop. "Because I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Besides, we're not _applying_ anything in the first section of the paper. We're just leading into our example of the general flow-down structure for critical parameter management. We don't get into the applications until later, when we've introduced the topic we picked."

"You still have to mention your topic in the introduction!" Honey Lemon adds cheerfully. She sits beside Hiro, which has given him a good look at her laptop screen. He's pretty sure from the length of her paper that she, as always, is going to be the first of them to finish the assignment.

"Well, _duh,_ " Gogo replies. "All I'm saying is I think she also wants us to go into that CPD&M process map she showed us, remember? She harped on it for like two days, so I bet y— _hey_!"

Before Hiro can finish scanning her notes, she seizes the spiral notebook, a maligned expression on her face. "Oh, come _on,_ Gogo," Hiro wheedles, bringing out the puppy-dog look that works so well on everyone except Aunt Cass and Baymax. "You _know_ it's completely unfair that Professor Dobbs doesn't let us use our laptops in class—it's an advanced tech class in _robotics!_ And I write too slow, and my handwriting is...you know…"

"Atrocious?" Gogo supplies helpfully, blowing her gum into a bubble as she peers down at Hiro's own spiral-bound notebook, whose haphazard series of notes looks more like a series of snail trails than anything coherent.

"Exactly," Hiro replies, unashamed. Across from him, Fred types so viciously at his keyboard that he might as well be attacking it, but he pauses long enough to snort at Hiro's response. "I just don't have what she said about the Cp and Cpk classifications. And the Kano Process. But I wrote everything else!"

Gogo's sigh is long-suffering, but she tosses him the notebook in favor of a return to glaring at her computer screen. "You should do something about that, Hiro," she says. "You write like a freaking doctor."

"Don't I know it," Hiro mutters, flipping the pages of her notes once more. "Oh yeah, she _did_ give us the Cp formula, didn't she?"

"Can I just say—again—that this would be much easier if she would just give us a test like a normal professor?" Fred grumbles.

"Most of our professors have assigned at least one paper so far this semester," Honey Lemon rebukes gently. "Just not—"

"Fifteen pages."

"Right."

Hiro dutifully transcribes Gogo's notes into his file, only half-listening as Fred and Honey Lemon begin to debate the pros and cons of tests and papers. Their assignment isn't so bad, he thinks. It's just a lot of different components that need to be fit together coherently. The hardest part will be organizing it all, but now that he's gathered everything he needs to make it work, he feels a lot less worried.

Stretching his arms above his head, Hiro peers at Baymax, who sits in his usual place in the corner next to the kitchen. While Baymax's advice about their paper would have been useful, the healthcare companion has always refused point blank to help them with any of their school assignments. (Hiro can almost hear him now: "Research suggests that the best ways to learn a subject is to study and teach each other. Having the answers handed to you does not improve your overall comprehension of a topic.")

And so Baymax tends to cloister himself in the corner during their study periods, looking like a cross between a watchful cat and a punished child, though Hiro has never been able to explain his amusement at the image to Baymax's satisfaction. At any rate, it seems like the healthcare companion enjoys the time spent scanning the guests in the room ("It's educational," he always replies in response to Hiro's questions), if the frequency of his visits are any indication.

"I need a break," Hiro says suddenly, breaking up the debate. Fred blinks at him. "I'm gonna run to the kitchen and see if I can swipe some chocolate cake. Want anything?"

"Hanami dango," Fred says instantly, and Wasabi—who has yet to look up from his screen—adds "Cinnamon rolls."

"I could go for chocolate cake, too," Gogo replies.

Honey Lemon nods, adding "If you can get past Baymax."

"He's been better since Wasabi explained that _most_ humans eat more than the recommended amount of sugar and fat sometimes. When we're doing social things. Also, thanks for that," he adds to Wasabi, who grins at his screen.

"It was just getting kinda sad with you trying to sneak junk food from us whenever we went out."

Hiro coughs a laugh. "Anyway. He basically just makes sure I cut back on that stuff on other days to make up for it. Remind me again why I let him download those databases on nutrition?"

"Like you could have stopped him," Gogo responds slyly, turning back to her computer.

There's no good response for that, so Hiro stands and meanders toward the kitchen. Though weekends typically attract a fair amount of customers, mostly locals from the neighborhood and students from the high schools in the area, the cafe is particularly packed today, perhaps due to the cooling temperatures of the San Fransokyo winter, which always drives up the appeal of a decent cup of hot coffee or cocoa. Even as small as he is, Hiro has a hard time squeezing between the tight clusters of occupied chairs to reach the kitchen.

Baymax, who leans slightly against the back wall, pauses his systematic scans of the cafe to watch Hiro's approach.

"I've come for chocolate, and you can't stop me," Hiro tells him with a smile, extricating himself from the gap between the last two tables.

"I have come to find that to be true as a rule," Baymax remarks, slowly pulling himself upright. "But I must warn you that consuming high amounts of sugar can stress your liver and—"

"Bad cholesterol, triglycerides, leptin resistance, addictive sugar response...did I cover all of it?"

The robot's sigh is long-suffering, but the way his vinyl lower eyelids shift upward just a fraction suggest that he is amused (though Baymax would, of course, note that "robots are incapable of experiencing such an emotion"). "I believe you have."

"I'll eat a ton of vegetables tomorrow or something," Hiro says, holding his right hand up in an _I swear_ sort of gesture, one that Baymax has finally become accustomed to.

"Nine vegetables," Baymax presses.

"Are you crazy? Six."

"Seven."

"Deal." Hiro smiles again and makes a shooing motion, as it would be hard to squeeze around Baymax's girth to get into the kitchen, but the robot tilts his head distractedly in the way he does when trying to decipher Mochi's erratic behavior. "Baymax? What is it?" Hiro follows the robot's gaze, but there are too many people moving in the small cafe, there's nothing out of the ordinary as far as he can tell.

"There. By the window," Baymax says slowly. "I believe that the woman who has just entered is the same one rescued from within the portal."

The words sound disjointed, almost bizarre to Hiro's ears. In the three months that have passed since they first discovered all that had happened between Callaghan and Krei, Hiro has almost managed to forget that the whole thing had ever happened. Between their frequent group patrols as Big Hero 6 and their inundation with coursework for SFIT, all that came before Tadashi's death has begun to feel like a past life that happened to someone else.

But the young woman Baymax has pointed out is clearly the one they rescued: short stature, mousy brown hair pulled back into a loose bun. To Hiro, her presence in the cafe is as unbelievable as if she is a ghost.

Maybe she is. It would explain the sudden and irrational wash of anxiety and dread that falls over him like a flood of cold water.

She is frowning down at a scrap of paper in her palm, and Hiro takes advantage of her distraction to duck behind Baymax before he can rationalize the action. "Go into the kitchen?" he asks, huddling behind the robot's bulky frame.

Anyone else would probably have instantly caught Hiro's meaning and started off for the door, but Baymax, being Baymax, turns to stare at him instead. "You appear to be in distress. Do you wish to avoid speaking with her?"

"No. Well, yes," Hiro replies, squirming under the robot's gaze. "I don't know. I want to think about it."

Baymax tilts his head, but he finally obliges. Hiro steps just to the side of him, still using the robot as a shield, and slips into the kitchen in front of the robot. One of the part-time baristas Aunt Cass hired shoots them a fleetingly curious glance as she steps away into the back room, but Baymax ignores her. The robot has a question prepared before Hiro even has time to lean in relief against the wall. "Why do you wish to hide in the kitchen?"

"I don't know. It's not a big deal or anything," Hiro replies sheepishly. "I just...don't know what to say to her. I mean, the medical team scooped her up right after we got her out of there, and we never actually met. While she was conscious, anyway. You know what I mean."

He sighs, glaring down at the floor. There's more to it, of course, but he's not sure he wants to bring the rest up to Baymax, who will undoubtedly point out the irrational trend to his thoughts—and Hiro doesn't need anyone to point out how insane he sounds.

Abigail Callaghan, whether she deserves it or not, will forever be connected with her father in Hiro's mind. It's been a hard thing, moving on after his brother's death—something harder than Hiro thought any human being could ever withstand. A small piece of him was ripped away on the evening when Tadashi sunk into flames, and he's not yet managed to fully adjust to the void his brother left behind, if it's possible to adjust to such a wound at all. His thoughts shift relentlessly toward his brother day after day, and Hiro has never lost the painful urge to turn to his brother to vent about his inability to cope—except that Tadashi's gone.

Sometimes, he wonders if it will always be this way. A ghost of a brother peering over his shoulder, remembered but invisible, present but unable to help in any real way except for the guidance offered by his memory.

And Robert Callaghan is the one who ripped Tadashi away. His daughter had nothing to do with it—and couldn't possibly have predicted what would happen to her, and her father's reaction, and the resulting death of Hiro's brother. Objectively, all of this is undeniable. But it's still impossible _not_ to form connections between the daughter and the father, and he's not sure what will happen if he faces Abigail. What he might say to her.

"I guess I just don't know why she's here," he says finally, aware that Baymax is waiting patiently, as he often does when he wants Hiro to provide more information. "It's been...well, months. I never needed to talk to her, and she never came to talk to me. So why now?"

"I believe that is a question only she can answer," Baymax replies. The response isn't disparaging, as it might have been from someone else.

Hiro runs a hand through his hair. "Yeah, I know. It's just kind of hard to...to actually _see_ her, I guess."

"Hiro? How's the paper coming?" Aunt Cass asks cheerfully. She balances a tray of empty dishes in one hand and hobbles carefully across the tile floor to place it on the island in the middle of the room. Her smile falters when she finally turns to look at his expression. "What's wrong?"

"It's nothing. Nothing serious. Just—Abigail Callaghan is here."

Aunt Cass frowns uncertainly, but Hiro can see the moment when she recognizes the name: abruptly, she straightens, her mouth pulling into a tight line and her hands coming together, one slowly folding into a fist and the other covering it, as though she's preparing for a fight and not a conversation. Hiro is almost grateful to see that he's not the only one struggling with warring emotions.

"What does she want?" his aunt asks, her voice almost too quiet to make out in the slow thrum of chatter streaming from the door to the cafe.

"I don't know yet. Baymax saw her. I didn't talk to her."

Aunt Cass nods, peering down at her fist as though she still isn't sure whether or not she means to use it. The hunch to her shoulders is wary, and the half-pained expression on her face is fairly familiar to Hiro, who is often the cause of such an expression. He and Tadashi used to put Aunt Cass through the ringer when they were younger, and Hiro's no stranger to her calculating pauses, which hover like a long intake of breath before the shouting begins. Between small scuffles with other students at school and buying a motorcycle that would "surely be the death of you" and, of course, bot-fighting, Aunt Cass has had practice dealing with unwanted situations—though perhaps few so unwanted as this one. Normally, if he had been at fault, Hiro might have begun to rattle off excuses to calm her down, but he currently feels just as lost as she looks.

After a few moments, her jaw tightens resolutely, a sign that she has begun to come back to herself. "Well, we can't just leave her there," she says briskly, straightening the hem of her apron. "She might just have come in for a coffee."

Hiro might have known that his aunt's practical tendencies toward feeding and _mothering_ would win out in the end, though he doubts that she really believes Abigail has appeared on a whim.

"I'll go find out what she wants," she remarks, squaring her shoulders. "Stay here."

Hiro doesn't dare to peer after his aunt as she sweeps from the kitchen and into the cafe, but Baymax has never had any qualms about staring. The robot shuffles into the doorway, where his wide frame blocks the entrance entirely.

"I've told you it's really creepy to stare at people, right?" Hiro asks, more to distract himself from his sudden nausea than to actually correct the healthcare companion's behavior.

"I am not staring at _people_. I am watching Cass speak to Abigail."

Hiro hums indifferently, thinking that it's a good thing that most of the cafe regulars just consider an immobile robot to be part of the scenery at this point. After a brief hesitation, he hops up to sit on the granite countertop of the kitchen island in spite of the way his mind provides an impeccable rendition of Aunt Cass's frequent spiel about _food-prep surfaces_ and _get your butt off the counter, Hiro_. "Not that it's good that you're staring or whatever," he begins, half curious and half in dread, "but—what are they doing?"

Baymax doesn't move. "They are sitting at a table while speaking to each other."

"Can you hear them?"

Some of Hiro's updates to Baymax's construction over the last few months have included solid-state components, meaning that no audible whirring suggests a focus on his audiovisual equipment. Still, the robot tilts his head the way one would when listening carefully for a sound. "My speech recognition software is familiar enough with Cass's speech patterns that I am able to distinguish her words from those of other speakers in the cafe. However, I am unable to detect Abigail's voice."

Hiro frowns. "Worth a shot, I guess. Do they look...I don't know, sad or upset or angry? How do they look?"

"They look like two people talking," Baymax replies, and Hiro rolls his eyes.

"Not sure what I expected," he mutters. Baymax still has difficulty reading _his_ emotions, and Baymax has spent months at Hiro's side by now.

"Cass is standing. I believe she is about to return."

Hiro perks up, straightening in place. A minute later, Baymax totters backward to make room for Aunt Cass, who reenters the kitchen breathlessly, her expression serious.

"What'd she want?" Hiro asks. Aunt Cass frowns and swats his leg, and he slips off of the counter at once. "What'd she want?" he repeats.

Aunt Cass frowns, shaking her head. "She wouldn't tell me anything. Just that she wants to talk to you. I couldn't get a word out of her otherwise." Her hands are still clenched into fists, but she makes an obvious effort to unclench them, placing them on her hips instead. "I haven't told her anything—just that I wasn't sure you had gotten back from a friend's, and that I'd see if you were here. I can make her leave if you want. You don't have to talk to her."

"Well—did she say what it was about?"

Aunt Cass shakes her head again. "Just that it was personal, and that she really hoped to get in touch with you. She wouldn't say anything else." Pausing, she glares toward the door. "Not sure I like her."

Hiro heaves out a long, slow breath and shoves his fists into the pockets of his hoodie. It's not something he consciously means to do, but he finds himself waiting for Aunt Cass to speak, to give him some sort of direction.

"I think you should talk to her," Aunt Cass says regretfully, filling the silence. "I know you probably don't want to—I don't think _I_ would want to—but I think if you don't you'll just be...wondering." She tucks a strand of his flyaway hair behind his ear.

Hiro nods slowly, his stomach still rolling unpleasantly. "Yeah. You're probably right," he says at last.

Baymax hovers a little closer to him in the way he sometimes does when vacillating between a hug and a firm talking-to as the best course of action.

"I am _not_ distressed," Hiro remarks preemptively, pretending not to notice Aunt Cass hiding a fond smile.

"Would you like me to accompany you?" Baymax asks instead, perhaps deciding that a conversation about emotional strength is not one Hiro's likely to tolerate at the moment.

Hiro considers the question. "No," he says at last. "But thanks, buddy. I think maybe this one is something I should do on my own. No following, okay?"

"We'll be right here," Aunt Cass says. "Yell if you need something. She seems _alright_ ," she adds grudgingly, "but if you decide it's too much, I can get rid of her." The brash, no-nonsense tone inspires a little more confidence from Hiro.

"Thanks," he says, and then he slips out of the doorway and back into the crowded cafe, feeling two pairs of eyes on his back. _I'm gonna have to talk to_ both _of them about creepy staring after this,_ he thinks to himself.

.

.

.

 **A/N:** Hi! It's been a while since Malignant Butterfly Infestations, but I've had this idea floating around for a while, as well as ideas for another story (in which I finally get to write something with Tadashi in it!), so I'm jumping back into the fandom for a bit.

Abigail is such a fascinating character to me. In the movie, we never really get to meet her, but I've been wondering what she must have gone through after waking in the hospital. What must it be like to have someone love you so strongly that they'll stop at nothing to punish the ones who hurt you? Or to live with the knowledge that your father's love is something that destroyed another person's life?

This story (in four-ish parts) will explore that idea, and it will also give Hiro a chance to weigh Callaghan's actions again, and to consider what parts of his past he needs to hold onto – and which parts he needs to let go.

If any of this interests you, then please stick around! I hope you won't be disappointed :-) Please let me know what you think – feedback and criticism are both very much welcome!

Till next time, happy reading!

ket


	2. Part Two

_**.**_

 **Part Two**

.

 _Abigail_

He's not what she expected, this Hiro Hamada.

Abigail never got a good look at the boy after being pulled from the portal, and she's never learned much about him from her dad—though it's certainly possible that her father knows more about the Hamada family than he's told her. He's been remarkably tight-lipped about the events leading up to his attempted murder of Alistair and his involvement in the death of the Hamada boy— _the other one_ , Abigail thinks awkwardly, averting her gaze from Hiro. Her dad hasn't told her much of anything during her visits, and Abigail is too polite and too afraid to ask. And there's nothing like a separation by a sheet of bulletproof glass and the thick walls of the prefecture's jail to make a family visit truly awkward.

Abigail clears her throat and peers at the boy seated across from her. His arms are folded across the top of the table—defensive, but not leaning away, which is possibly a good sign. Dark eyes scrutinize her keenly with all the care of a scientist. _Very serious for a kid,_ she thinks, but perhaps that's what she _should've_ been expecting: it would have taken a lot of intelligence and courage to do what he'd done for her.

Dark eyes and a dark lion's mane of hair. Small in stature, even for a fourteen-year-old, with thin shoulders and a smooth sort of baby face in spite of his age. Ink stains on his fingers— _does_ _he take notes with a pen and paper?_ she wonders, considering it odd for a tech university student. Still, in a way, she thinks, he's exactly the sort of student her dad would have wanted to add to his collection. _Raw talent,_ he would say of the mental acumen Hiro Hamada has already shown. _It can't be taught, so you have to gather it where it grows._

The boy squirms a little in his seat, frowning. Aside from curt pleasantries, they've exchanged no information, only studied each other coolly from across the table. Abigail smiles, wondering what he's made of her, and he seems taken aback by the expression.

"You've...done well for yourself," she says finally, wincing a little at the rusty formality to the words. She clears her throat again. "I mean, I've heard only good things, you know? Acceptance into SFIT at fourteen, two or three project exhibitions under your belt...it's a good track record."

Hiro shakes his head. "I take after my family," he says, neither boasting nor denying. "And my friends, I guess," he adds, turning briefly to look into the heart of the cafe. Abigail follows his gaze but can't make out what he's looking at—until a flicker of movement catches her eye. A girl across the room, streaks of purple in her hair, waves exaggeratedly in their direction before holding her hands out, palms up, in a _what's-going-on_ sort of gesture. "They say you're like the people you spend the most time with." Hiro grins, shrugging pointedly at the girl.

Modest, too. Not exactly what she had expected. "Still, it's impressive—especially at your age. Robotics is a tough field. _Engineering_ is a tough field." He stares. She suddenly feels like the weird estranged aunt at every family gathering, the one whose bizarre statements are only humored because everyone knows that she's just talking to hear her own voice, that she's not really familiar enough with anyone to make any real contribution to the discussion. "But it's all I've done for years," she adds quickly, hoping to keep things going, "and I don't think I'd choose anything else."

"I was wondering that," Hiro says, leaning a little more onto his elbows. "What kind of training you had to go through to be a part of Krei's experiment."

"I have a master's in engineering and a Ph.D. in robotics," Abigail offers, smiling as he looks her up and down. She answers the unspoken question: "I'm only about twice your age. But I guess you could say I take after my family, too." From the sour twist to Hiro's mouth, it's probably not the best thing to tell him. She fumbles for a new subject, unwilling to jump into the real reason for her visit. "Study group?" she inquires, pointing at the table of Hiro's friends, who have finally stopped sneaking glances their way. "For your robotics classes?"

Hiro nods slowly. "Yeah. We have this...paper coming up. Basically just a fancy summary of what we've learned in the second half of this semester. Mostly creating customer-based products and working on dominant design practices, but also some TRIZ stuff. The forty principles and the law of ideality and all that."

"Ah, it's been a while," she laughs. "Though—I've always liked the law of ideality. Such a cool concept. Once you learn about the ineffective parts of a system, you improve it as time passes. 'Technical systems get more effective as time passes' and so on."

"Almost like the theory of evolution, but for robots," Hiro agrees, looking amusedly toward the door that must lead to a back room. Standing a few feet away from it is a robot that can only be Baymax, whom Abigail has heard her dad describe with a rare hint of admiration in his voice. It's probably one of the strangest-looking robots she's ever seen, some kind of cross between a marshmallow and a giant teddy bear, and it holds a tray in its hands. _Do they make it work in the cafe?_ "Don't look at him," Hiro tells her, grinning. He's peering casually out the window now. "He does this thing like a cat sometimes."

"A cat?" Abigail echoes curiously, though she dutifully turns her gaze away. "Did you make him yourself? What's he made of?"

A shadow flits over Hiro's face, but it disappears almost as quickly as it came. "My brother did, actually. But I've, you know...made improvements. He's got a carbon fiber-reinforced polymer skeleton, and his skin is vinyl. Had to be touchable—he's designed to be a healthcare companion."

Abigail nods. "What kinds of improvements?"

"Oh, uh, armor, mostly. But also some improvements to his battery pack—for a longer time between charges, almost three full days if he needs it—and most of his internal processes use solid-state components now."

"Smart," she remarks, impressed. "Sounds like you've already got a handle on the practical part of class."

"Yeah, well, I couldn't get out of taking it," Hiro replies. "And there's some stuff I don't know." He says the last part wholly without pride or disdain, as though he hasn't just conceded that a world-class institute of technology has only _some stuff_ to offer him. He snorts suddenly. "Okay, look again."

She does. The robot is closer. "Why is it just standing still?"

"I told him not to follow me over here," Hiro replies, still unable to wipe the grin from his face. "So he's not going to be obvious about it. This is Baymax being sneaky."

"It can override your orders?" Abigail asks, surprised. Robots with more flexible programming are rare, at least in her experience. Mostly because people want to be sure a robot will do a job properly when told—and, in her opinion, because people are still too afraid of all the sci-fi dramas telling horror stories of robots that can think for themselves.

"Well, yeah. He's a healthcare companion, and sometimes people don't really know what's best for their health. So he'll take orders into account, but if he finds something irregular or another way that he knows is better for a patient's physical or psychological health, he'll do that instead."

Abigail nods slowly. "That makes sense…especially since people in health emergencies probably wouldn't be thinking clearly about the orders they give. A robot would have to think through that situation on its own."

Hiro nods. "Tadashi and I also programmed a few basic things he can't override, though. No saving one person if it means hurting other people, no destruction of property unless it's beneficial to someone's health...that kind of thing."

At this point, Hiro is staring pointedly out of the window again, but Abigail takes a second to look back toward the robot, which is only a few feet away now. It stands perfectly still—though it has obviously moved between one glance and the next—and its head is tilted in catlike fascination.

Abigail laughs. "Huh. Unbelievable."

Hiro beams at her.

Baymax takes advantage of their distraction to make his final steps, moving forward all at once to hover at Hiro's side. "I understand that you did not want to be followed. However, I believe—"

"It's fine, Baymax," Hiro interrupts, bumping a fist against the robot's arm.

Baymax nods. "I have brought tea. Chamomile."

 _And it's even familiar with apology gifts,_ Abigail thinks. _Amazing._

Baymax lowers the tray to set his offerings onto the table: two tea cups of steaming, golden-brown tea, a little pot of milk, a few packets of sugar, and honey, the last in its traditional plastic-bear form.

"You brought honey?" Hiro asks, sounding surprised.

"It is not as healthy as its sugar-free alternatives, but you did not receive chocolate cake," the robot replies.

"Awesome!" Smiling in satisfaction, Hiro overturns the contents of the bear into his drink—far more than the normal amount for a cup of that size. Baymax makes a noise that might have been an aborted sigh in a human. Then, a screen on its chest blinks to life, and a video plays on the surface of the vinyl. Dancing vegetables. A carrot, some broccoli, a radish…

Abigail frowns in confusion, but Hiro bursts out laughing and gives the robot a playful shove right in its belly. "You're _obnoxious,_ Baymax," the boy says, and Abigail realizes that Baymax is teasinghim. Which is a deceptively complex feat, requiring a fundamental understanding of human interaction that most robots don't have. It's almost too much to believe that coding this advanced was born from the minds of two young boys—geniuses, by all accounts, but still boys.

"You know you don't have to stay here, right?" Hiro asks eventually, stirring the syrup into his tea. He looks up at Baymax seriously. "I know you like to check in, but everything's fine. You can go back to Aunt Cass."

"You are certain?"

"Yeah. Thanks, Baymax."

If it's possible for robots to feel reluctance, this one does. It waddles away slowly, as if expecting the boy to call it back at any moment.

Hiro turns back to her, taking a sip of his tea. "He'll...probably be back," he says apologetically.

"That's fine. It's—he's—really interesting."

The boy nods, staring into his tea. He shifts in his seat, seeming suddenly uncomfortable, and Abigail realizes that he's probably trying to figure out how to ask her why she's here. _Way too polite,_ she thinks to herself, and she sips her own tea. It's so hot it nearly burns her tongue, but the chamomile is tinged with something deliciously fruity, and Abigail wonders whether it's a homemade blend.

"I, uh," she begins, suddenly flustered. "You're wondering why I came, probably. And it's partly—I had to thank you for what you did. A lot of people wouldn't have done it—wouldn't have even _thought_ about doing it—but if it weren't for you, I wouldn't be here now."

Hiro shrugs bashfully, ducking his head as if to make himself smaller than he already is. "It's nothing special or anything. Once we realized there was a chance you were alive—"

"A _chance._ A lot of people wouldn't have risked their life for a chance. And the life support would have given out soon. I was lucky you came when you did. And that you came at all."

"I guess..." Hiro begins slowly, "I guess it was because of Tadashi." As if the name is a spell, Tadashi Hamada for the first time becomes an almost tangible presence in the conversation, a third member of the party who perhaps should be there but isn't. _The other one,_ Abigail has been calling him. She had seen photos, of course. Information about Tadashi Hamada, once a rising star at SFIT, is far more prevalent and far easier to track down than information on his brother, a brilliant but still new freshman. _The other one_ had a strong jaw and a longer, fuller set to his build, as though he might have been the fully finished version of Hiro.

The boy doesn't elaborate on how his actions were like Tadashi's, only stares down at his tea. Abigail wonders what it must be like to have put down roots and grown together, and so closely, with another human being, only to have them plucked away before you've had a chance to truly share their life. As an only child, she always finds the complexities of sibling interaction bewildering.

He clears his throat. "Also because of Baymax, probably. They say you're like the people you spend the most time with," he repeats.

"Sure," Abigail offers, not understanding at all. When Hiro makes no move to continue the conversation, Abigail adds, "I probably should have thanked you earlier. I would've sent a letter or called, but it seemed kind of—impersonal, you know? And this is the first chance I've really had to visit, since I've been in and out of the hospital for the past few months."

Hiro blinks owlishly, and Abigail thinks that he probably hasn't considered her since her rescue, nor has he wondered at her absence from his life. A dead brother is probably a more pressing issue. "The past few months?"

She nods. "The atmosphere of the portal—well, I guess it can't be called _atmosphere—_ it had a lot in common with the properties of outer space. So even though I was there for just a few weeks, the side effects on my body were...it screwed me up." She laughs, though it's not really funny. "The pod wasn't geared for long-term space travel. I should know. I was in training to be an astronaut before all of this went down—that's why I was picked for the test. Good mind and at the peak of my health and all. But we never thought we'd need anything for space travel. Actually, we thought we were already being really safe just with the stasis and life support, like we were overcompensating for whatever might happen. Krei and I had calculated only for a few seconds of weightlessness before I was supposed to appear through the other end of the portal. So the pod didn't have any of the benefits an astronaut would have had...and there was no lessening the side effects of the portal. Especially since I was in hypersleep the whole time and couldn't do anything to help."

"What kind of side effects? Like—radiation? Blood cell and balance changes? Cardiovascular issues? Bone and muscle loss too, probably," he adds, looking her up and down as if he can diagnose her health as easily his robot probably can. Abigail wonders if her weakened state is as easy to see as she fears.

"Not so much with the radiation. It wasn't as bad as it would have been in space, or so they tell me. But you're on the mark with everything else. Part-time astronautics expert?"

"Nah. Baymax screened my health for _everything_ after I fixed him up again, even though we'd been in there for ten minutes, tops." His teacup is still mostly full, but he pushes it away and rests his elbows back on the edge of the table. Abigail wonders whether the honey was mostly to get a rise out of his robot. "It's really serious, all the health stuff? Are you still in the hospital a lot?"

"Not so much. Not anymore, anyway. Mostly I go in for physical therapy a couple of times a week to rebuild muscle and motor skills. The bone loss is something else, though—it'll take a while to repair. And without being able to study the portal or its atmosphere, it's still hard to know what caused it, if it _was_ very different from our version of outer space. And it sure _looked_ different."

"It was crazy, wasn't it?" Hiro's eyes grow distant. "Like nothing I've ever seen before. All the dust and colored clouds and light. Like a frozen sunset."

"Don't forget the radiation," Abigail adds dryly.

"Yeah, there's that, too. But even with all that, it was amazing to see. To really _be_ there. Like you were in a dream. I've thought about it a lot since."

So has Abigail. For nearly six hours after first being shot into the portal, she had studied her environment, both with her own eyes and the limited tools available in the pod. Six hours spent sinking from wonder into fearful anxiety as she watched her life support supplies slowly disappear. The last hours spent deciding whether to wait for rescue or to invoke the device's life support systems, which had been implemented into the design in case of unforeseen accident or injury. The last hour spent realizing rescue might never come.

If anyone had been able to convince her to get professional help for this, it's the sort of thing a shrink would have latched onto for sure—if Abigail had ever let on that the pod hadn't instantly and automatically deployed its life support and hypersleep systems. It's easier to allow people to believe _that_ instead of having to discuss the reality with them. Those hours of terror and doubt plague her mind even now, but she doesn't

need someone digging into her every waking thought because of it. There are some things that need to be discussed, and there are others that are better swept under a rug and forgotten.

"Did you get to see much of it?" Hiro asks, curious.

It's a loaded question. _Yeah, I did, but do I actually want to talk about it?_ Thinking of the rainbow fractals of cloud makes her stomach churn even now. But on the other hand, if there's one other person who really understands the strange, eerie universe of her nightmares, Hiro's it. She may never have another opportunity to speak about it with anyone who can relate.

After she was pulled from the portal, most of the people she worked with had greeted her with prying questions about her experiences: What had she seen? What had it felt like? What were her theories about the contents of the portal? What were her resulting medical conditions? (This last, of course, was always injected into the conversation with attempted nonchalance.) But she's always shut down these discussions as politely as possible. No one else needs to know the way she sometimes dreams of being back there, being rocked in the pulse of the expanding atmosphere like a ship on the waves. No one else needs to know that the brilliant pinks and purples of sunsets still make her nauseous.

Except that Hiro might understand all of it. For a minute, she briefly considers discussing it with him, but she's avoided the subject for so long that it would be hard to push the words now. And besides, it isn't what she's here for.

"I got to see a lot of it, yeah. I was trapped in the portal for a few hours, waiting to see if anyone would…" she clears her throat. "I don't usually like to talk about it. It's...kind of a touchy subject."

It's more truth than she gives to most people, and Hiro seems to understand the delicacy of the situation. "Okay, sure," he says, leaning back a little in his seat, his interest faint but still palpable. "But...it's not really a good idea to bottle that kind of thing up. Or at least that's what Baymax says, anyway. He says it's not that great for your psychological health, and he's usually right about stuff like that. He downloaded a database," he adds in amusement. Despite his background in tech and engineering, Hiro seems to be of the same mindset as the nurses and therapists she's met with: care before intrigue and health before curiosity. He frowns at her. "If you can, you should find someone you feel okay talking to about it."

Abigail almost laughs. _That's the whole problem, isn't it?_ "Normally, I'd talk to Alistair about this kind of thing—new discoveries, engineering marvels, whatever. Alistair Krei," she adds at Hiro's confused expression, and he nods coolly. "We've always been sort of partners in crime when it comes to this sort of thing. We've worked together since I was out of college. But I haven't talked to him since you pulled me out of the portal. It's just hard to let go of what he did."

"Because of how he ran the experiment?"

"Right. He's always been reckless. It's one of the things I like about him. But he was never reckless with _me_. Never with my safety. And then after Alistair, I'd talk to Dad, but…" she shakes her head.

At the mention of her father, Hiro's face goes blank. "But he's been sentenced to prison."

"Yes. But I visit. He's still my father, you know? But I can't really talk about what happened in the portal with him. When I bring it up, it's like he's a completely different person."

Not that Abigail doesn't understand where her father is coming from _._ Some days, especially after a particularly tiring session of physical therapy or an embarrassing moment of physical weakness a woman of her age should have been able to overcome, she feels as though Alistair's actions are completely unforgivable. Other days, she almost finds herself willing to forgive her old friend. But either option forces her to reconsider the morality of her father's actions, which she believes on most days to be marginally unacceptable or, at worst, misguided.

At least she had until she sat down in front of the boy whose brother her father killed.

She remembers the look that always sweeps over her father's face with any mention of Alistair, or the experiment, or her injuries. It's a dark and impenetrable expression that had once been completely foreign to Abigail, who has been reading his expressions with great fluency since childhood. It's an expression that looks very similar to the one on Hiro's face now.

"He's not all bad, you know," she says quietly, thinking now of her father's fierce and teary gaze the first time he had been allowed to see her in the hospital after the portal incident, the rattle of the handcuffs as his rough hands folded over hers, the flood of _I love you_ s that she still isn't sure he consciously let out. "He just—"

"Took a wrong turn?" Hiro asks, and Abigail is surprised at how cool his voice has grown. "That's what they said on the news for weeks after. He was a great father and a great professor that just _took a wrong turn._ Except that the wrong turn killed my brother."

She bites her lip, uncertain. "Hiro, I know—I know he didn't mean to hurt anyone, especially your brother. He told me Tadashi was one of his most talented students."

"He didn't mean to hurt anyone, but he didn't exactly care about it afterward either," Hiro hisses fiercely. "Did you know what he said to me about it? He said _Tadashi's_ mistake was going back into the fire to save him. _Tadashi's_ mistake."

Abigail says nothing. She doesn't know what to say. It's one thing to know _in theory_ that her father ripped a family apart in his efforts to save her, but it's another thing entirely to read it on the face of another human being, to watch grief and rage flicker across Hiro's face as he speaks. Her father's actions may have inadvertently saved her life in the long run, but they tore Hiro's apart.

She puts her head in her hands, fighting to look at all of it objectively, to catalogue the actions and reactions to find fault, but it's impossible. Robert Callaghan is her father, and to her, his lifesaving actions are _misguided_ but understandable. It's impossible to know what she would have done in his place, but it might not have been far off.

"I'm sorry," Hiro says quietly, and Abigail looks up at him. "I know he's your dad. And you didn't ask him to do what he did. It's just kind of hard to see you and think of what happened. And you...look like him, somehow."

"I'm sorry, too," she replies, her face suddenly burning. Coming here was a terrible idea. A part of her had known it in advance, but it's only now that she's begun to realize how stupid it was. "I really should go."

"Okay," Hiro replies uncertainly, looking surprised. "But…" He watches her finger the omni-band around her wrist. Abigail looks down at her tea. "I thought—why did you come?"

She shakes her head slowly, wondering whether you're supposed to swipe your omni-band at a payment kiosk on your way out or give your credits directly to a barista.

"The tea's on the house," Hiro adds dismissively, guessing her intentions. He's leaned as far back in his seat as he can, another of the cool, blank expressions worming across his face. Suspicion. "Why are you here? You said you were partly here to thank us. What was the other part?"

She hesitates. "I just wanted to see how you would react when I brought up my dad," she explains, and then she winces. Even to her own ears it sounds manipulative.

"Why?"

"You know...you know why he's been placed in prison. The prefecture has charged him with a lot of different things—"

"Sure. Arson, destruction of property, aggravated assault, attempted murder. Involuntary manslaughter." Hiro schools his face into a mask. "What's your point?"

This is stupid. She takes a breath and says it anyway. "He's out for an appeal next week, and I just thought that you could—" Hiro laughs incredulously before she can finish. It's not a pleasant sound, and she thinks that he probably hadn't known he was going to make it until it was out of his mouth. "Nothing that would get him _out,_ just enough that would reduce the lifetime sentence."

"And you thought I would help." Hiro says flatly.

"I wasn't going to ask now that I know..." She stops. It sounds weak. She has always known how Hiro would feel, how he _must_ feel about her father. She'd let herself be talked into this so easily, more to give herself a reason to finally track Hiro down than anything else, but she knows it was a mistake now. She had dreamed up a scenario in which Hiro, understanding her father's actions and grateful that she is alive, might cast aside his tenacious attachment to his brother to help them. _But people aren't really like that, are we?_ she thinks. _We pretend to be considerate, and we try to be when we can, but we can't see that far beyond ourselves. It's too hard to see past our own problems._ Hiro's struggles are as foreign to her as hers must be to him.

Hiro is looking into the heart of the restaurant, eyes set on the table where his friends cheerfully debate axioms and principles and whatever else they shove into an engineering student these days. Abigail suddenly regrets pulling him away from them.

"You're right," he says finally, still not looking at her. "I think you should go now."

Abigail nods slowly, though she still casts about for something to say, like a verbal band-aid she can plaster onto the end of their conversation.

When she doesn't move, Hiro stands pointedly, and she follows. Stiff-shouldered and resolute, he winds carefully through the crowded tables to lead her to the entrance of the cafe, opening the door for her so she can step out into the sunlight.

Words crop up on her tongue—nothing serious, just enough conversational bluster to make her feel a little better about their discussion—but Hiro has already shut the door. Quietly, with a small _snick_ instead of the sharp slam she or her father might have done.

 _Polite_. Too polite, and that's the worst. She half wishes he had shouted at her. Probably she would have deserved it.

.

 _Hiro_

On days like today, Hiro feels far from the person he used to be a few months ago after Tadashi passed away, a person so apathetic about his life that he was half-willing to let everything go. It seems almost unfathomable that those feelings were once a reality for him.

Not that there aren't still days when that struggle seems overwhelming, of course. But today isn't one of them.

Today, the sky is a deep and radiant violet with the incoming twilight, and beneath it, the cold air is a welcome comfort to Hiro and his friends, who—aside from Baymax—are still sweating a little beneath their winter garb. The weekend patrol had been routine, and their only real actions had been to force a few teenagers to stop making trouble for a shopkeeper, but the thing about patrol is that it's _exhausting._ Covering the entire city on foot is a tiring job, and as Honey Lemon pulls her long hair into a bun to cool off, Wasabi mops a dull sheen of sweat from his forehead and stows the rest of his light armor—designed for portability as much as strength—into a backpack.

Only Gogo and Hiro, who spend most of the patrol on motorized wheels or in the air on Baymax's back, don't feel the draining exhaustion that pulls at the others. Hiro in particular usually finds himself excitable and in high spirits after a successful patrol, and while the others are usually too tired to be entertaining, Fred always manages to draw from his endless pool of energy for some good fun.

"I know everyone says this, dude, but it really is all in the wrist," he explains, spinning the long piece of cardboard that they'd swiped from behind a restaurant a few moments earlier. Fred flips the cardboard gracefully across his back and pulls it around to twirl it in the air in front of him.

Hiro tries the same movement, sort of throwing his cardboard behind him and bending so it can roll along his spine, but it ends up on the sidewalk.

Fred laughs. "Not to worry, little man! We'll make an awesome sign-spinner out of you yet."

Gogo, her steps easy and light without her wheels on, looks over her shoulder at Hiro and snorts, grinning.

Hiro sticks his tongue out at her. "Show me again?"

Obediently, Fred launches the board into the air again, sliding it smoothly across his back and around his front as if it's an extension of his arm.

 _Tadashi would have been_ awesome _at this,_ Hiro thinks to himself as he tries again. His brother had always been adept at anything requiring hand-eye coordination, though he hadn't really cultivated the talent after dropping karate for robotics club in the second grade. The memory of his brother, while achingly bittersweet, doesn't cause the raw anguish it used to.

"Perhaps it would be best to throw the board closer to your teres major muscle while avoiding your iliac crest," Baymax suggests, breaking him out of his thoughts.

Hiro bends down to pick up the board. "I'd do that if I knew what it meant," he replies amiably.

Baymax bursts into an explanation that Hiro only half hears: the robot has adjusted his backpack to settle it closer to his shoulders, which makes Hiro grin in spite of himself. Baymax hadn't protested when asked to carry his own bag—his armor, once detached, is far too heavy for any of the human members of their party to carry—but he looks a little strange with it on, the pack turning him into some alternate, adorably literal-minded version of Santa Claus that hands out free healthcare and suckers instead of wrapped gifts.

After politely waiting for the end of the robot's tirade, Fred thumps Baymax on the back. "Yeah, man, but sometimes it's not enough to know the _process_ of something. Sometimes you just have to do it so often that it becomes like _breathing_." Baymax tilts his head in that considering way, so Fred turns to the others and rambles on. "Anyway, I think I'm gonna split when we hit campus. Heathcliff and I have a date with literally _all_ of the _Hulk_ movies—he's never seen them," he adds, sounding incredulous.

Hiro works hard to keep the amusement off his face as he imagines the stone-faced Heathcliff being forced to sit through any movie at all. Wasabi doesn't hide his reaction: "I wouldn't have sat through those crappy things if he hadn't made us," he mutters to Hiro under his breath.

"What was that?" Fred says, perking up.

"Nothing," Gogo interrupts, scowling at Wasabi. She turns back to Fred, her expression earnest. "You think he can take us all home when he picks you up in the limo?"

"The apartment's only a block from campus," Honey Lemon protests.

"It's cool—you guys are all close by, so we can drop y'all off. Actually," he adds, his voice turning sly, "maybe you want to just come over to my place for a movie marathon?"

The groans are out of Wasabi and Gogo's mouths before Fred can even finish the sentence.

"On second thought—"

"Actually—"

Before they can finish, and before Fred can convert to righteous indignation, Baymax interrupts. "Hiro," he says suddenly, jerking Hiro from his amused observation, "You have an email from Abigail. It is—"

Hiro elbows him soundly in the gut. "Remember how we talked about _not_ announcing emails?"

"I only noted that you _have_ an email," the robot protests. "I did not read it aloud this time." Still, Hiro can almost see the wheels turning in Baymax's head—figuratively speaking, of course, since the robot's internal components have been upgraded to nonvolatile memory systems—as he remembers what Hiro has said about the action of smacking or elbowing someone. _Irritation._

Hiro turns to meet his friends' withering scowls, which he knows are directed at Abigail and not at him. They had been just as upset as Hiro had been after learning what Abigail was after.

"Incredible," Honey Lemon says, shaking her head. Her narrowed eyes and the angry flush to her cheeks are so uncharacteristic that Hiro has to do a double take: Honey Lemon is almost never angry, or at any rate, Hiro rarely sees it happen.

"Is she still bugging you?" Wasabi asks.

"Not after I track her down," Gogo interjects, arms folded across her chest.

"No one's tracking anyone down," Hiro replies exasperatedly. "It's not worth it." He makes a show of shrugging his shoulders impatiently. Though he won't say so aloud, it's taken him most of yesterday and today to work through his feelings about it at all.

Baymax had helped, mostly by sitting still to listen without judgment as Hiro ranted animatedly and paced the floor of his room all evening. And then, when he'd exhausted his rage to collapse into a tired heap on the bed, Baymax had asked Hiro whether he, Hiro, would have done the same as Abigail if a member of his family had been in Dr. Callaghan's situation.

That had been hard to process. Hiro's mind flew automatically to Tadashi, who never would have slipped into the murderous rampage that Callaghan had—whether or not he believed Hiro to be dead. Tadashi was fiercely overprotective of Hiro, sure, but he wasn't _vindictive,_ notas far as Hiro knew.

Not that Hiro had ever put his brother in a situation serious enough to warrant such severe retribution, of course, so maybe it was impossible to say for sure. But before Callaghan had done what he'd done, Hiro would have said _he,_ Hiro,never would have hurt anyone either, but he'd come very close to sinking to Callaghan's level.

But the question hadn't been whether Tadashi would have done something worthy of prison; it was whether Hiro would have stood by his brother if he _had._ And that was a much easier question to answer. Tadashi was Hiro's older brother, his best friend, his partner in crime. And while Hiro would have had a hard time wrapping his head around any kind of uncharacteristically violent action on Tadashi's part—or believing that Tadashi had done something horrible at all, even with objective evidence against him—Hiro never would have abandoned his brother. No matter what Tadashi had done, Hiro would have fought for him, struggled to understand his reasoning, and tried to pull Tadashi from the deep pit into which he'd fallen.

He would have been trying to do exactly what Abigail is doing now.

The deep mire of anger and indignation steeping in the pit of his stomach hasn't completely drained away, but at least Hiro can better sympathize with her position.

"Look," Wasabi says, clapping Hiro's shoulder, "you don't have to talk to her—and especially not to Callaghan—if you don't want to. Just ignore the email. Delete it. And say the word and we'll help you figure out how to make them back off."

"Thanks guys. I think I'm okay."

Aware of Hiro's reluctance to get deeper into the subject, Wasabi lets the conversation drop. Fred, sensing the opportunity, attacks the subject of Hulk movies again to fiercely defend against Honey Lemon's claims that they "just weren't _great._ " ("There were _mutant poodles_ ," Gogo reminds him airily. "Do we really have to say more?")

For the most part, they leave Hiro to his thoughts as they reach the edges of SFIT's campus. And rather than allowing Fred to coerce him into Heathcliff's limo with the others ("This is a kidnapping—we're all going to my place."), Hiro protests that he still has to wrap up his paper, which is true. Though it's not the _paper_ at the forefront of his mind right now.

"See you in class, Hiro!" Honey Lemon calls cheerfully from the window, and Fred pokes his head out of the sunroof to wave with characteristic exuberance as they drive off.

Smiling, Hiro holds up a hand and starts back home, catching the streetcar partway. Baymax follows him in customary silent-shadow fashion, ignoring the stares he attracts from bystanders in favor of observing Hiro and his surroundings.

"You finished the majority of your paper this morning," Baymax says finally as they climb the hill toward the Lucky Cat Cafe. "You could have left with your friends for the evening."

"Yeah, but I kinda wanted some time to think," Hiro replies, pleased that Baymax has at least learned not to point out his lies when they're not in private. White lies, anyway. "And besides, I didn't really want to sit through the Hulk movies with Fred again. He's _scarily_ into them."

Hiro pulls the cafe door open wide so that Baymax can waddle through first. "To think about the paper?" the robot clarifies.

"Not really. I mean, kind of—I really do need to finish it, and I'm just at the last part where we apply the laws of robotics to one of our projects, so it won't be hard. But I just want to figure out what's going on with Abigail without everyone else, because they're kind of…"

"Worried?"

"Well, yeah." Hiro pushes Baymax from behind to help him squeeze past a few of the tightly clustered tables, thinking that they really need to rearrange the seating again. "I guess that's the best way to put it. I just don't want them to think I'm stressing out about it."

"And _are_ you 'stressing out' about it?" Baymax turns his head as much as he can to peer at Hiro critically.

"No." With a final push, Baymax is through the tables, and they climb the stairs to Hiro's room. "But do you think...should I read the letter she sent? Or should I delete it like Wasabi said?"

Baymax takes the last few stairs slowly, pausing at the door to Hiro's room to tilt his head in consideration. "It is impossible to say for certain, as I am unaware of the email's contents." Hiro rolls his eyes, watching the robot move past him to step carefully into the charging station to replenish his battery.

Other than a few words here and there, Baymax is always silent while recharging. The robot is fully capable of speaking and functioning normally at these times, but Hiro has always equated the state of recharging with sleep in his mind. He turns his back and drops into the chair at his desk, intending to sort through the rest of his notes as he finishes writing the paper, but he's surprised when Baymax speaks again.

"But, Hiro," the robot adds slowly, "while I cannot tell you the correct course of action, it is worth noting that you have a profound amount of natural curiosity. I believe that you will likely regret deleting the email without opening it."

Hiro frowns, realizing that Baymax is probably right. "Thanks," he says finally. Baymax doesn't reply. His eyes close to black slits.

Whatever the case, Hiro doesn't feel like dealing with the email right away; he has to work up the nerve. Instead, he boots up his computer and rummages through his mess of notes.

The next half hour or so is spent documenting the ways in which his recent projects exemplify the laws discussed in class. Hiro and Fred recently upgraded the flamethrower mechanism of Fred's suit, and while Hiro won't go into the details of the suit itself (as unlikely as it is that their teacher will realize that the flamethrower being described is attached to the suit of one of the masked heroes patrolling San Fransokyo), the upgrade is a great way to analyze some of the different laws of engineering.

For some time, he loses himself in the intricacies of writing. Papers have never really been Hiro's strong suit; he's more the type to brainstorm a project and jump into its construction rather than to organize his thoughts and verbally plan out an attack. But the last few months at SFIT have made something of a planner out of him by necessity, and with the helpful notes from his friends, this paper flows more smoothly than most.

He stops when he reaches the conclusion, his fingers hesitating on the keypad. All of his notes on the laws of robotics and the law of ideality are useless to him now. _How do you wrap stuff up without sounding stupid?_ he thinks. _Conclusions are always supposed to mean something._

But Hiro only lets himself stare at the screen for so long before boredom takes the reins. Endings are hard. And the presence of Abigail's letter in his inbox hasn't been far from his mind all evening.

He sweeps his hand across the interface to bring up his email window, and there it is, sitting atop the pile. Hiro wavers for only a second before tapping it open, letting it the window fill the screen before he can change his mind.

 _Hiro,_

 _First, I want to say that I'm sorry. It's probably the first thing I should have said to you when we met at the cafe, but I wasn't in the right frame of mind. In fact, it's not even enough to say I'm sorry, because my family has caused yours so much suffering, and it's nothing we can ever take back._

 _I shouldn't have expected you to put everything aside so easily. My only excuse is that before we met, you were just an abstract person to me, and all I could think about were my own problems. I didn't come meaning to hurt you. For all he's done, my dad is the only family I have left, and I felt like I had to say something in his defense. I know it's probably hard to understand, but at the end of the day, he's still my dad. Wouldn't you have done the same for someone you love?_

 _Anyway, I'm not really sure why I'm writing this, or if you're ever going to read it. You'd be well within your rights not to. I guess maybe I'm just after a chance to explain myself. Like I said, I didn't mean for things to happen like they did. You just weren't as real to me as my father is. Now, I know you're just a person who has gone through more than anyone should have to._

 _All the best,_

 _Abigail_

Hiro settles slowly back into his seat, suddenly aware of how close he'd been leaning into the screen. He feels a little lighter now, the tension in his chest loosening as he processes Abigail's words.

 _She dropped the thing about having me come talk to her dad, at least,_ he thinks to himself.

There's nothing too surprising in the letter, he realizes upon rereading it. Nothing he doesn't already know. Except that the words _wouldn't you have done the same for someone you love_ strike Hiro a little close to home.

 _Tadashi never would have done something like that,_ Hiro thinks to himself. _He never would have gone as far as Callaghan did. As far as I almost did,_ he adds as familiar feelings of doubt and self-loathing flow to the forefront of his mind.

Over the past few months, he's spent a lot of time indulging these sentiments, wallowing in his self-recriminating thoughts. Wondering what could have gone differently, what Tadashi would think of him, what he's going to do without his brother. Before Tadashi died, Hiro never would have considered himself to be a particularly unhappy person; other than the occasional lost bot fight or infrequent feelings of bored restlessness or worries about what he's going to do with the rest of his life, he'd had little to feel upset about. And Tadashi's cheerful good-naturedness had always held him afloat for as long as he could remember.

It's only since losing his brother that Hiro has come to understand that most people's lives are filled with the occasional quagmires and low valleys, deep and dark pits that must be crossed with care. It's only now that Hiro realizes how much Tadashi's presence in his life had somehow kept him from the fear and worry inherent in the real world, in the life of the average person.

Before, _depression_ was something Hiro only vaguely understood, something sad and serious that only happened to other people. Now, Baymax's frequent references to his psychological databases whenever Hiro gets into one of his moods and refuses to speak or eat have afforded Hiro an exhaustive understanding of the condition.

Hiro knows he's worried Baymax over the past few months. The robot won't admit it, since he's a personal healthcare companion who "cannot experience worry, as that would undermine my ability to provide clinical advice." But Hiro knows Baymax better than that, recognizes the apprehensive, uncertain way he hovers over Hiro when he's not sure what course of action to suggest. At one low point, there had even been a time when Baymax had been worried to the point of divulging the details of Hiro's condition to Aunt Cass and Hiro's friends. And that point had been around the time that Hiro had claimed to be "sick" enough to cut classes for three days in a row, refusing to eat or to get out of bed. Luckily, Hiro's companions had taken it in turns to sit and talk with him for a while, long enough for him to finally resurface from his misery.

Things are getting easier now, though. Not like the hole in Hiro's chest is going away anytime soon, but his periods of optimism and contentment are stretching longer and longer nowadays.

It's only through Baymax's guidance that Hiro has started to deal with his darker thoughts in healthier ways, taking the time to feel them settle in his mind before considering how to work past them. He makes a conscious effort to do this now, pressing his palms to his forehead as if he can slow his thoughts with a bit more pressure. The doubt and worry are familiar ones he's worked through, so he processes them and sets them aside.

As for Abigail, he doesn't feel angry with her, not anymore. It had been surprise, more than anything else, that had led him to act as he had in the cafe, but after thinking it all over, he can understand the place she's coming from.

Hesitantly, he holds his hand over the screen, and then he swipes the email away to bring up an empty field for his response. The words come slowly, and he deletes half of them in order to reword the message, but eventually he's drafted a letter by way of reply.

Baymax is all for having Hiro process his emotions, understand his thoughts, and confront his feelings head on. Forgiveness is just one of the buzzwords the robot is always harping on about, and just this once, Hiro thinks he knows what his friend would suggest he say in his response.

 _And he's right about me,_ Hiro thinks, rereading the words one more time. _I'm a naturally curious person. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing…_

He sends it. For a moment, he stares at the screen, only realizing he's biting his lip once it starts to hurt.

Finally, he takes to his feet, stretching his arms overhead and shaking away the coiled tension in his limbs. He doesn't feel _better_ , exactly. But he thinks replying was probably the right thing to do anyway.

A glance at the clock tells him the hour is later than he'd thought. He steps into the bathroom to brush his teeth and change for the night. As he walks back to his bed, he notices for the first time in a long time the emptiness of Tadashi's section of their bedroom. Aside from the obvious emptiness, of course—because it isn't as though Tadashi's things aren't there. It's just that _he_ isn't. The room is almost clinically tidy. Everything in its place. Not lived in. Not possessed.

A grief counselor Aunt Cass had very briefly visited had told her to clear away Tadashi's things, but neither Aunt Cass nor Hiro will stand for it. After all, they don't need the space, really, and it still feels somehow wrong to clear it all away, as if removing the possessions might somehow erase the memories as well. Aunt Cass straightened up a bit after Tadashi passed on, and Hiro knows she still comes in frequently to dust, her hands trailing slowly over old photographs and books and gadgets. But for the most part, Tadashi's bedroom looks as it did on the day he died. As if Hiro and Aunt Cass half-expect him to brush through the door of the cafe at any moment, some sort of unfinished experiment tangled in his arms, something he would undoubtedly set down in order to help Aunt Cass pick up the dishes before flicking the side of Hiro's head in greeting, dragging him upstairs to finish his homework, talking to Hiro about his day, helping him with the business of growing up…

 _It's funny,_ he muses. _How different things are now._ It's almost as if he's a different person than the person he was before. As if the Hiro who once had Tadashi is a complete stranger.

He turns away from Tadashi's side of the room and toward his own. There's nothing for it: growing up and changing is unavoidable, no matter how much Hiro wishes he could stay the same has he was when he still had Tadashi.

 _But at least if I'm gonna grow up, I still have a lot of help doing it,_ he thinks to himself, dragging a blanket from the back of his desk chair. Baymax is settled onto his charging station still, unmoving and silent. Hiro can't help but bump his fist lightly against the robot's vinyl skin as he wraps the blanket around himself. "Thanks, buddy," he whispers.

Baymax isn't as out as he'd thought, because the robot's eyes open a little, giving Hiro the impression of a lazy cat. "For what are you thanking me?"

"Mmmm, a lot of things," Hiro replies, smiling.

Baymax scrutinizes him for a moment without moving from the charging station. The robot's eyes are half-open, giving his expression an endearingly bleary quality. "How are you feeling, Hiro?"

It's a loaded question, and one that Hiro has characteristically felt the need to brush off, but he knows what Baymax is asking. And his friend deserves an actual answer. "Not perfect…but better. Less worried. I think everything with Abigail's gonna be okay. You were right to tell me to open the email."

Baymax raises his head, looking pleased. "I have come to a better understanding of your behavior and predicted responses over the past few months."

"Yeah, you have," Hiro agrees.

"You are…" the robot pauses, tilting his head as he searches for the right words. "You are _on cloud nine?_ "

Hiro laughs. It's probably just as well that Baymax never gets embarrassed when Hiro laughs at him, because the robot's struggles to achieve a more human-like usage of language are amusing, to say the least. "No, I'm on cloud nine most...hmm...well, when we're literally flying in the clouds. That means really, _really_ happy. Today, I'm more…content to wait and see what happens, I guess. Like _taking it easy._ "

"I see," Baymax replies, and Hiro knows he's filing away the information for later use. "You are going to bed?"

Hiro pulls the blanket close around his shoulders, shuffling slightly to cover his legs as well. "Yeah. I'm gonna polish up the paper tomorrow, but I'm mostly finished."

Baymax nods approvingly. "You have achieved an average of seven hours of sleep over the past week. It would be unfortunate to alter this statistic."

"Wouldn't want to mess up the numbers," Hiro grins. "Sorry for waking you up, buddy. Keep recharging."

"I do not mind being woken," Baymax replies, but his eyes again narrow to slits, and he grows quiet and still.

Once Hiro turns off his computer, the room grows dark. It takes a minute for his eyes to adjust, but the faint light coming from the strings of lanterns intersecting the street outside makes it easy to crawl into bed. The bay window behind his pillow faces out into the dark night outside, and Hiro clambers onto the low shelf to get close to the glass, folding his legs beneath him and raising the blinds for a better view.

Messing up the numbers isn't Hiro's intention, but his mind is too awake to fall asleep so soon. On the empty streets below, the cable car comes and goes a half dozen times before he finally crawls into bed.

.

.

.

 **A/N:** If there is anyone who is the opposite of a math/engineering major, it's me. I struggle to do basic equations at the grocery to find the cheapest foods and save my poor wallet - so everything I know about engineering/the law of ideality/the effects of space on the body I basically got off the Internet. Please be gentle if you see mistakes!

Anyway, this chapter turned into 20 pages…way longer than I planned. If you can, leave me a review...Too long? Too wordy? Too angsty? Let me know what you thought!

Peace,  
ket


	3. Part Three

.

 **Part Three**

.

 _Abigail_

.

When Abigail arrives, her father is waiting for her at the visitation window.

She slips into the nearly empty room and nods at the attendant, scribbling her information onto the sign-in sheet on the desk before turning to face him. As always, the dark lines creasing his forehead and the corners of his eyes make him look slightly annoyed, and she resists the urge to check her phone to be sure she's arrived on time. At her approach, he glances at her, his strong jaw tilting up in greeting. It strikes her, as it typically does, that he looks strangely benign in the beige prison scrubs. Before he'd ended up in here, Abigail couldn't ever remember having seen him without an impeccably pressed button-up.

She sinks onto the empty metal chair in front of the window, dropping her bag onto the floor to pick up the phone on her end as he raises his. "Hey, Dad," she says.

He smiles at her. "Abigail. How did everything go?"

"Not great," she replies honestly, watching the expression on his face smooth into something more impassive. It's the look he always has when he's trying to conceal his thoughts, but Abigail recognizes this expression for what it is: disappointment. Not in her, probably, but in the situation as a whole. As always, her instinctive reaction, long ingrained from years of dancing around her dad, is to tell him she'll fix the problem or figure out some alternative. This time, of course, that's impossible. "I mean, I'm not sure what you expected. Did you really think Hiro would go for it?" she asks. Her tone is genuine: she hadn't been sure whether her dad believed Hiro would accept the idea.

"I hoped that seeing you would persuade him," he replies evasively, studying her. "He didn't take it well?"

Abigail rubs her forehead. "You know this isn't really my thing," she says at last. "Talking to people, convincing them or whatever. You've always been better at it. I don't know how you do it."

Her father frowns. "We went over what you should say."

"Yeah, but that was before I actually _met_ him. It was different face to face. As soon as I saw him, I couldn't really...I couldn't go through with it once he said no." She sighs. "You know I hate this."

"I know. I know you do. But it could be the thing that makes a difference," he tells her. He's said this a thousand times before, so often she knew it was coming before he spoke the words. He probably knows what she's thinking, because a wry smile creeps onto his face so that he looks almost fond. "All that matters is the jury, what the jury thinks. And as great as it will be having you there to give testimony for me, having Hiro too would mean a lot."

He presses the tips of his fingers to the bottom of the window as if he can reach out and touch her. It's a familiar gesture, one Abigail sometimes thinks he does unconsciously. When she was growing up, he'd never been the type of person to offer explicit assurances of love or tenderness; she'd only ever known his affection from the way he held her hand sometimes or tugged gently at her ponytail, the way he'd reach out for a side hug and give her a quick, proud smile.

"Yeah, well, he's not on our side. Okay?" In spite of her irritation, Abigail presses her hand to the glass as well. "You weren't there. You didn't see his face when he realized why I went to see him. He looked so…" she swallows. "He's just...not on our side. And he's not _wrong_."

"Abigail," her father begins, his voice low and frustrated.

"Look, I know, Dad," she interrupts. "I get it. Having Hiro give some context to what you did…that would be great. But…" she shakes her head.

"We need Hiro's testimony, Abby."

"We've already got people to vouch for your teaching abilities, and students who can talk about all you've done for them. I know it's not a lot, but I think that's all we'll have. We're not getting Hiro. It's not fair to ask him that."

Her dad snorts. "Fairness has nothing to do with it. Did you try to tell him—"

"We talked for a _while_ , okay?" She realizes how loudly the words came out only after a few heads turn to her. Making a concentrated effort to calm down, she withdraws her hand, curling it over her chest. "The thing is, the only context he would give to your appeal is context about what his life is like without his brother. Or context about the things you said about him, after—" She stops abruptly. They've never talked in detail about this part of the story, about the series of events that have put her father is in prison. Abigail isn't sure how to broach this new ground or whether it's best to avoid it altogether.

Her dad must understand her dilemma, or else he understands the uncertain look on her face. "When we met after the fire? What I said about Tadashi?" he clarifies, mouth pressing into a line. At her nod, he sighs. He doesn't reply right away, and Abigail thinks that this conversation is going to go nowhere, which is what always happens whenever they get too close to discussing the reason her father is in here. Because the truth is, she doesn't want to hear what he did any more than he wants to talk to her about it.

To her surprise, though, he continues. "I said a lot of things I shouldn't have back then. I didn't mean what I told him. Not that it matters now. I was…" his voice is so low she has to strain to hear, and he swipes a hand down his face, maybe to rub his eyes and maybe to hide his expression. "I was another person then, after everything…happened."

Abigail is frozen in place, wondering if she'll break whatever spell they both seem to have fallen under by moving. Her father is silent long enough that she begins to wonder whether he'll continue, and then he does.

"Tadashi shouldn't have run after me. Sometimes, I still can't believe that kid…" he trails off, eyes glazed over as he ponders. "He knew I was going through a lot. I never told him what happened to you, but he was a good kid. He knew something was wrong. Sometimes I wonder if that's why he came after me. Because he understood I'd gone through a lot."

He's silent for a long time. Finally, Abigail says quietly, "Do you see why we can't ask Hiro to do this? Would _you_ be able to do this? If I was dead, and you knew Alistair was the reason, could you still come to his appeal and defend him?"

Her words break the spell. At the mention of Alistair, her dad grits his jaw and adjusts the phone on his ear as if he doesn't want to hear her words. "It doesn't matter what _I_ could do," he says after a moment. "It matters what _he_ can do." There is a long pause, and his expression softens a little. "The thing about Tadashi...he was always too kind for his own good. Dropping everything to help people, even if it was an inconvenience. And Hiro—I didn't know him as well or for as long, but I could already see his brother in him. He's like Tadashi in more than just looks. He's a good kid."

Abigail frowns. "I know. That's what I've been trying to say. He doesn't need this."

Her father shakes his head slowly. "I mean that Hiro will _help_. He can be swayed. You just have to use the right words."

She stares. It takes her a few seconds to understand that her dad still means to persuade Hiro to speak on his behalf.

For just a moment, she sees the side of her dad that put him here in prison: ruthless, calculating, demanding. Once upon a time, he'd been the sort of father who forced her to work and rework her homework late into the night until every part of it was polished and correct. Whether it was a documented analysis or one of her frequent entries into engineering competitions, he would send her back to her desk, even past midnight, with a quiet "fix it." There was no telling what was _broken,_ of course. That would be far too easy.

But she'd never complained. He'd always been soundly strict, overbearing and demanding but affectionate in his own thin, subtle way. And all he'd done had shaped her into the person she is now.

It wasn't as though she was the only one who earned this sort of challenging focus, either. He'd done the same with his students. Following his feedback, she'd seen students stare in confusion or swear a feat was impossible until they went off to take the proper steps. Robert Callaghan had always been that way, pushing people farther than they thought they could go, sometimes almost to their limits. It was what had earned him such respect—he'd always brought out parts of people they didn't know they had.

Maybe that demand for perfection, the ruthless urging for _more_ and _better_ , had been what made him go too far in the end. After all, what was he supposed to do with the seemingly irreversible problem of his daughter's death? Who could he push to fix _that_ problem? She has the sudden, almost hysterically amusing thought of her father telling Krei to fix things, to bring her back from the dead.

It has always been rare for Robert Callaghan to have to settle for anything less than perfect. Maybe it was no wonder her father had been unable to accept the situation, to understand his own limits and the limits of people around him. Short of having someone fix the mistake, he'd had to take matters into his own hands to solve the only problem he could: the fact that Krei had gotten away with it all.

And it hadn't worked, not really. Now he was back to manipulation, to pushing people too far.

"You're crazy, Dad," she says softly. "You know that, right? Not everyone can be pushed into things. Not everything is worth forcing people into. Hiro's…he's been through enough." She pauses, frowning down at the table of their booth. She'd only just met Hiro, and for a moment, it seems too much like a betrayal to be siding with him now—not over her own father, who had practically gone mad out of love for her.

But even if she's only just met him, Hiro _had_ saved her life—the life of a complete stranger. _A good kid,_ her father had said of both him and his brother.

And Hiro's pained grimace and clenched fists had been genuine, as far as she could tell. It was obvious that testifying on behalf of Robert Callaghan would tear him apart. He didn't deserve that. There was no way she could ask it of him, and not only because he'd rescued her or because she felt she _owed_ him somehow.

As hard as the Callaghans are both fighting for this appeal, this is a step too far for her, a line she can't cross. Abigail remembers the lively, domestic feel of the cafe, Hiro's amiable group of friends, his protective aunt and robot. _What right do we have to intrude on that life and ask him to do this? Especially after he's had to rebuild his entire world after what Dad did?_

Finally, she looks up at him. "We have to leave him alone, Dad. I think...I think you've done enough."

It's as close as she's ever been to explicitly stating what her father did for her. She'll never be able to get the word _kill_ out of her mouth, not when talking about her dad—as if she can pretend it never happened as long as they never say it aloud.

He looks torn between sternness and sadness. "Abigail, _we can do this_. Hiro can be convinced if you use the right words—"

"I'm not _going_ to use the right words! Because the thing is, _I don't want to convince Hiro to come to the appeal._ "

For some time, her father is quiet. The edges of her vision blur with tears, and she can't see him very well. Abigail heaves a great breath and rests her head on her hand. "I'm sorry. It's just...we shouldn't have asked him in the first place. I never should have let you talk me into asking him."

"Abigail. You have to understand—"

" _You_ don't understand, Dad. You _took away his brother._ " There. That's even closer than she thought she could go. She wipes her eyes quickly.

Her father looks helpless. "Don't cry—don't...that's not what I wanted. I never wanted that. It's just…I thought you were dead, Abby. And that meant I was as good as dead. I thought Krei needed to…to be punished. And I was going to say or do anything I needed to if I could make sure that happened." By the time he finishes, his eyes have grown oddly fierce.

"How could you think I'd be okay with that?" she whispers. "I still don't get it. I'm…I'm s _o glad_ we're both alive. Because things could have gone either way. But I don't understand how you could think I'd be okay with you killing Krei. When I stepped into the pod, I knew the risks as well as he did, and I was ready for whatever happened. Krei is… _was_ my friend. _Our_ friend."

At the name, her father's expression darkens all at once as though he's suddenly morphed into a total stranger. The ugly twist of his mouth turns him into a person she's only ever seen on the grainy video footage the police showed her of Yokai's attack.

"I'd do it again for you," he says firmly. His face is like stone. He still hasn't removed his hand from the window. "I love you. I'd do it again in a second."

Something in her mind drifts into place, something somber and heavy that somehow strips away some of her regard for her father without stripping away any of her affection. As much as she wishes they could go back to the way things were before all of this, before the appeal and the charges and her accident with Silent Sparrow, she realizes how different things are now. How much the past few months have changed her father.

Slowly, she reaches out to press her fingers to the window as well. The glass is warm under her touch from the heat of his hand. "I love you too, Dad," she says finally, her voice choked with tears. " _So_ much. And I understand why you did what you did. But I'm not going to do this for you. I think maybe you need to stay here for a while, as long as it means not hurting Hiro more."

The stranger vanishes, the dark expression sagging into something resigned and tired. To his credit, her father only looks slightly disappointed. For some time, he doesn't say anything at all, and she lets him sit and think. Finally, he frowns and nods his head. "I know talking to him must have been hard for you." he says at last. "And I know you've been doing a lot. The lawyers and fees and everything."

There's an _I'm sorry_ in there somewhere, but you have to have grown up with Robert Callaghan to recognize it. "I know, Dad. It's okay."

He nods, trying to smile. "I just hate talking to you through a window," he says quietly.

Abigail rests her mouth on her fist. "I hate it, too," she replies, voice muffled and thick.

Gradually, their conversation flows to less troubled waters: Abigail's health and recovery, the upkeep of the family home, the GED classes Callaghan is leading in the prison. Abigail has brought newspapers from around the area, as well as SFIT's university paper, to pass them on through the visitation attendant.

Abigail doesn't discuss her mental state with her father, or her dreams, or the three point seven ounce sample she brought back from her trip into the portal, a sample that is still collecting dust somewhere in the police's evidence hold downtown. And, at least for today, her father doesn't discuss the appeal, or Hiro, or their testimony.

 _We used to tell each other everything,_ Abigail muses. _But I guess there are some things better off not said. And there are some things about Dad I don't really want to know._

When their hour is up, an attendant on her father's side comes to collect him. Abigail picks her bag up off the floor and slings it over her shoulder. "I love you, Dad," she says, kissing her fingertips and pressing them to the glass. "I'll see you again tomorrow."

"Be safe, Abby," he says, and then he allows himself to be ushered away.

By this time of day, the room is beginning to fill with families anxious for their share of quality time separated by bulletproof glass, so Abigail makes her way out of the door.

Rain falls in a light mist outside. She slicks water from her phone on the way to her car, checking her mail for the write-up their attorney promised he would send today.

Instead, there's a message from Hiro.

She dives into the car, running a hand through her hair to skim water droplets from it. After some hesitation, she opens the email to read it.

 _Abigail,_

 _Probably you weren't expecting to get this almost as much as I wasn't expecting to write it. But I wanted to say that I get where you're coming from. I think I would have done the same if I was in your place._

 _I'm not talking at the appeal. I don't think I could ever get myself to do it. But I think I want to talk to Professor Callaghan, like you mentioned. Do you think you can tell me how to set that up?_

 _-Hiro_

Abigail leans back in her seat. _Holy shit,_ she thinks to herself. She's not sure whether to give Hiro the information or to urge him not to visit her father at all. _I can't believe he's considering it. And_ why _he would consider it._

Her father will say yes, of course—she'll have to call him with the news. But she's not sure Hiro knows what he's getting himself into, how badly her father wants this appeal to pass. She's not sure she'd exactly encourage the visit at all.

 _Maybe it's better this way_. _It's not my decision, and I'm not forcing him into anything...And who knows, maybe it'll be good for them to talk to each other,_ she thinks doubtfully.

After slowly pulling herself out of shock, she considers how best to reply, hunching over the tiny keypad as the screen bathes the inside of her car in blue light. Eventually, after a few false starts, she drafts a message explaining how to set up the prison visitation—and warning Hiro that her father probably won't be pulling his punches.

She reads it over twice. Nods.

 _Good luck, Hiro,_ she thinks, and then she presses _Send_.

 _._

 _Hiro_

 _._

When Hiro arrives, Robert Callaghan is waiting for him at the visitation window.

The prison room is partially full, but Hiro instantly catches sight of the professor in the glass pane all the way on the right. He'd be able to recognize the man anywhere—his dark hair, the deep furrows of his forehead, his piercing blue eyes. Despite the fact that his shapeless prison scrubs should have swallowed him up, the weighty bulk of the professor's shoulders cuts an intimidating figure.

Even so, he's paler than Hiro remembers, maybe from lessened sun exposure, which seems par for the course considering where he is. And though Hiro thought he would instantly be reminded of all Professor Callaghan had done, he's only struck by how sad the man looks, sallow-faced and strangely thin, his thick brows pinched in thought.

When Hiro stands uncertainly in the doorway for too long, a desk attendant catches his attention and tells him to sign in. Hiro jots his information down on the sheet and then, after a brief moment of hesitation, steps toward Callaghan.

The man's expression is serious but calm, much calmer than Hiro feels. The professor picks up the phone on his end and gestures for Hiro to do the same. To Hiro's relief, his hand doesn't shake when he reaches for it.

"Hiro," Callaghan says, his voice steady. "I'm glad you could come."

Hiro nods. "I wasn't sure about it," he admits quietly. It's an understatement: he'd spent the better part of the morning debating the pros and cons internally before turning to both Baymax and Aunt Cass for advice. Baymax had warmed to the idea as soon as he'd noticed Hiro's interest, which the robot took as a good sign. Aunt Cass, on the other hand, had obvious reservations. To her, the whole thing seemed like another secret plot to secure Hiro's help. Hiro had countered with the fact that Abigail's message had been transparent on that point: she'd explicitly warned him that her father would try to push him into doing the appeal. _Plot, yes. Secret, no._

So here he is. And as unlikely as it seems that the tired looking man before him will be able to convince him of anything, Hiro still feels anxious.

 _I'm here for Tadashi,_ he reminds himself. In the end, that had been the thing to convince him. _I just have to see Callaghan's face one more time and know why he did it. If he really wouldn't take it all back._

The silence between Hiro and Callaghan stretches. Both of them, Hiro thinks, are probably aware how badly they need to have a conversation. But Hiro, at least, isn't quite sure who should speak first or where to begin. After a moment, Callaghan clears his throat. "Where's Tadashi's...where's your robot?"

Instantly, the casual tone irritates Hiro. It's as if Callaghan thinks they can squeak by with a bit of friendly conversation after all this time, as if nothing has happened between them since they first met all those months ago. The surprise is enough to let him shake off his nerves a bit, though he tries not to let the annoyance show.

"Waiting outside," he replies simply, turning to face the door. Almost on cue, Baymax waddles into view, then leans back against the far wall of the corridor. The robot had adamantly refused to allow Hiro to visit Callaghan on his own, and though Hiro hadn't put up much of a fight, he'd insisted that Baymax wait outside. To his surprise, the robot had readily agreed, stating that while moral support would be helpful, the discussion was one Hiro should face on his own.

Most people, struck by Baymax's naturally adorable exterior— _huggable_ , to use the robot's own term—smiled or waved or laughed upon seeing him. Callaghan, though, just nods grimly in Baymax's direction.

The professor's somber expression, with the twist to his lips and dismissive set to his jaw, reminds Hiro of one of the last times he'd seen the man in person, back when they'd spoken of Tadashi. It feels like a punch to the gut, and suddenly, Hiro's ready for all of this to be over. "Did you agree to meet me so you could convince me to talk at your appeal?" he asks when Callaghan opens his mouth to speak again.

Callaghan snaps his mouth shut, looking faintly surprised. "Straight to the point, huh?" he mutters eventually. Then he gives a slow nod. "I'm not saying that wouldn't be one of my interests. Obviously. Since I sent Abigail to talk to you. I hear she upset you?"

" _She_ didn't upset me," Hiro corrects him pointedly.

"I get that now. I didn't see it at first. Abigail was very... _enthusiastic_ on that point. That she didn't want to upset you."

Restlessly, Hiro switches the phone from hand to hand. "Yeah, she sent me a message about it."

Callaghan nods again. "Hiro, I'm...I'm very sorry. It's been due for a long time, but I'm saying it now. To be honest, I don't... _regret_ what I did for Abigail, or chasing after Krei. But I do regret, more than anything, what happened to Tadashi."

Hiro looks down quickly, ashamed to find that his vision has suddenly blurred with tears, like the statement has triggered some instant Pavlovian response. He blinks the moisture away, and by the time he glances back at Callaghan, the man is leaning forward earnestly in his seat, his head close to the glass pane.

"Tadashi was one of my best and brightest students. One of the good ones, the ones who actually care about the class and about the _world_ and about some greying old professor and his life. I know saying all this sounds...empty, now. But it's true. I didn't mean what I said to you about it being Tadashi's fault. It was mine. It's the only thing I wish I could take back."

What he's saying doesn't sound right, not morally—not the fact that he doesn't regret all of the destruction and chaos he caused, the near-death of Krei. But hearing the words takes some of the weight from Hiro's shoulders.

And yet it's impossible to forget what Callaghan ripped away from him. If it weren't for the man who now sits before him, Tadashi would still be alive. None of this would have happened. Hiro would have been another person entirely. A _whole_ person.

Hiro feels cold. It's enough to make him want to puke. He passes a hand over his eyes, partially to keep Callaghan from reading his thoughts, which he feels must be plastered openly across his face. Then another thought occurs to Hiro, and he stills.

Tadashi had always respected Callaghan. Even before Hiro had met Callaghan personally, his brother had spoken highly of the robotics professor. _What would Tadashi want out of all this, if he were alive?_ Probably, his brother never knew what Callaghan had done, that he'd caused the fire—but what if he had? If he'd known what Callaghan was planning, what would he tell Hiro to do ? Curse Callaghan and cut him away for his part in Tadashi's death, unintended or not? Or forgive him wholeheartedly for something that may or may not have been an accident?

Hiro can't be sure. Like anyone else, Tadashi was prone to his fair share of anger, but to Hiro's knowledge, nothing had ever happened to his brother that was severe enough to warrant the rage Hiro now felt.

Still, Hiro guesses that Tadashi would have urged leniency. Maybe even forgiveness. It's how his brother had always been.

 _What a nut job,_ Hiro thinks, suddenly fond. And then: _But...even if Tadashi would have wanted me to,_ can _I actually forgive Callaghan for it?_ The idea seems so insane that Hiro almost feels a hysterical laugh bubble out of him.

The thought has plagued him on and off for some time now, and he's found himself considering it during his classes, in the middle of housework, while fixing up projects. It's a hard idea to wrestle with, and a hard one to put to rest—but part of the reason he's here now is to do just that. He's tired of wondering and tired of wasting his life on Callaghan, who doesn't deserve all the thought Hiro has put into him. And at the end of the day, maybe this is something Hiro _has_ to do—not for Callaghan, not even for Tadashi, but for himself.

Callaghan is watching him deliberately. He's leaned back now, probably to give off a look of calm patience, but his penetrating gaze is unsettling.

"Okay," Hiro says finally, his voice hoarse as the words scratch their way out. He clears his throat. A small part of him wants to say _I forgive you,_ maybe because it's the right thing or because it's what Tadashi would have wanted, but he falters in the end. He isn't sure if he'll ever be able to follow Tadashi's lead and forgive Callaghan one day, but he can't find it in himself to do it now. "I get it. I get what you're saying."

Callaghan nods sharply, looking pleased.

Hiro continues. "But I can't do the appeal for you. And you have to stop asking. You've done enough." At this, a bit of steel burns somewhere in Hiro, and he meets Callaghan's gaze.

The professor looks oddly startled, and then his mouth twists in irritation. "Abigail said the same thing earlier," he snorts. "Both of you are exactly the same, so—" he cuts himself off, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing his forehead. Hiro wonders what he would have said. "I don't get you, kid," he says at last. "Why did you come here if you didn't want to speak at the appeal?"

Hiro smiles wryly. "I don't really know. I just felt like...if I didn't talk to you, I'd waste a lot of time wondering about what you would have said. And I don't have time to waste on that." _I don't have time to waste on you,_ he thinks.

"God, you're like your brother," Callaghan says quietly, so quietly Hiro can't make out his tone or decide whether it's meant as a compliment. A twinge of pain thrums in his chest.

"I try," Hiro replies, glad that his voice isn't shaking.

Callaghan snorts again, rubbing his forehead. For a few moments, silence stretches between them once more. Hiro toys with the phone cord, not sure what else to say.

The professor takes a breath. "How did you…?" He stops. Hiro waits impassively, unwilling to prompt anything further. After a moment, the man tries again. "How did you do it? How did you keep from attacking me?" Callaghan asks finally, his voice still quiet. "You were so relentless about hurting me at first, that first time we fought, and then you just...let it all go. Instead of fighting me the next time, you tried to talk me out of what I was doing, even though I'd…" the words are unspoken, but Hiro hears it all. _Even though I'd killed your brother._

It strikes Hiro that this is the most emotion he has seen out of Callaghan in the entire time he's been here. Regret and sadness swim across his face, and he presses the phone to his ear with both hands as if to make sure he absorbs anything Hiro can offer.

Hiro thinks back to that time. It's hard to wade through the months that have passed since, months filled with the deep pits of _Tadashi's funeral_ and _empty spaces in the house_ and _depression_ as well as the broad peaks of _patrolling with friends_ and _flying after dinner_ and _SFIT classes._

He's come so far since then. But the truth is that there isn't much separating him and Callaghan. Their irrational rage had been worryingly similar, and they'd shared a mutual lust for revenge. It's enough to make Hiro cringe sometimes, his understanding of just how easily he could have sunk to Callaghan's level. "I had good friends to pull me through," he says finally. It's his customary response to this kind of question, and it's definitely true. But there's also a bit more to it. "I also...I wanted...well. Tadashi had just died. And I wanted to make him proud, or…" he shakes his head slowly. The emotion is too complex for him to put a name to it. Part of him wanted to make Tadashi proud, another wanted to follow his footsteps, to compete with him as only siblings can. Another just wanted to honor his brother's memory.

"Anyway. That idea—thinking about what Tadashi would have wanted—it made things easier. It gave me a direction. After that, the problem was just stripping away all the useless things that wouldn't let me get any further, like trying to get back at you for what you did. That wouldn't have helped me at all, and it wasn't what Tadashi would have wanted.

"It's like in robotics," he adds suddenly, smiling in spite of himself. "How your system becomes more reliable over time as you hone it for a specific purpose. You make it waste less energy, cost less. Make it simpler, more streamlined. Once I knew what I wanted, I stripped away everything that was useless to me. I'm still trying to do that, to...to figure out my goals and how to hone everything toward hitting them. And it's still hard to do, and I've had a lot of help, but that's how I held back. How I'm still holding back."

Callaghan's face is hard to read. His jaw is tense. "Tadashi guided you," he repeats slowly. "And you saved Abigail, something I can never thank you enough for. You saved her even when I couldn't. But wouldn't he have wanted you to _keep_ helping, if that's a part of your purpose? You said you didn't want to talk at the appeal, but do you think that a part of you came here because your brother might have wanted you to speak for us?"

It's an insanely low blow, and one that Hiro isn't expecting at this point. He opens his mouth reflexively, but Callaghan continues.

"I'm not asking only for me, Hiro. I'm asking for Abigail. What do you think it's like for her to be all alone in the world, to have to visit her only living family during visitation hours separated by guards and a glass window? You saved her life, Hiro, and that's a lot. But things are hard for her. I know they are."

The thought occurs to Hiro very suddenly, as it has in the past, that if Callaghan hadn't rushed into the fire and killed Tadashi, Hiro never would have gone after Yokai or rescued Abigail from the portal. She would have eventually died there, without anyone knowing she'd had a chance to live.

Callaghan had gotten everything he'd ever wanted out of the fire; Hiro had lost everything he'd ever had.

It's not a new thought. It's occurred to him on occasion over the past few months, but he's always pushed it away. He's not sure what to make of it, because the idea rubs at him like a sore. Abigail's nice and all, but losing Tadashi for her isn't a fair trade to him.

 _Not that Tadashi would want me thinking like that._

Still, Tadashi would probably understand, maybe better than anyone else in the world, how impossible it would be for Hiro to defend the man in front of him. And maybe the point, at the end of the day, isn't whether Tadashi would forgive Callaghan. Maybe the point is that Tadashi would have known Hiro's limits, and he wouldn't have pushed.

All of these thoughts race through Hiro's mind very quickly, but even in the time it takes him to process them all, he realizes that Callaghan is watching him again. This time, his eyes are studious and careful, like a man stooped over to watch a beetle squirming on the sidewalk. _Which is pretty much what's happening,_ Hiro realizes angrily, recognizing the manipulation for what it is.

"This isn't about Abigail," Hiro bites out fiercely. "It's about you." Part of him wants to slam down the telephone and walk away, but he glances over his shoulder at where Baymax waits. The robot is inside the room now, seated in a chair against the back wall—far enough away to give Hiro some privacy, but near enough to present a show of support. At Hiro's look, he waves his arm, tilting his head inquiringly. _Funny how he knows when I need him,_ Hiro thinks, shaking his head at the implicit question of whether he needs help.

By now, Callaghan has grasped Hiro's changed mood. "I'm sorry," he says, though when Hiro turns around, his face is once more expressionless. "You're right. It's not fair of me to ask anything like this of you. But I had to anyway. For Abigail."

Hiro nods jerkily, but he's not sure what to think. Callaghan leans back in his seat, looking aged and tired once more. _Is that it?_ Hiro wonders. _Is he really going to let it go?_

"You must hate me," Callaghan says finally. His tone is casual, as if he's discussing the weather. "Still. For what I did."

Hiro shakes his head. "I don't. But not because of _you,_ because of _me._ I don't hate you, because it hurts _me_. It just slows me down. It's just that...I don't have energy to spare on you. There are too many other things I need to focus on."

Callaghan looks taken aback, the sharp lines and crags of his face smoothing away as a tension in him vanishes. After a moment, he gives Hiro an approving nod, something triumphant in his eyes. "Wise move, kid," he says quietly, studying him again. "Saw that grant you and Gogo won for your research on the ultra-lightweight casts," he adds, shoulders rising nonchalantly.

The abrupt change of subject startles Hiro, though he tries not to let it show. "Yeah," he says slowly, "Yeah, we needed some extra funding, and we got an educational grant to buy some of the materials we needed."

Across from him, Callaghan nods. "Your brother won a few grants in his day," he says tersely, looking for the first time almost uncomfortable with the emotion that must be plain on Hiro's face. "You're just like him," he repeats. He glances backward over his shoulder to one of the guards, nodding. The man strides forward, and Callaghan rises from his chair. "And you're right—don't slow down for something like this. Someone like me. I hear you're going places. Keep it up, Hiro."

Before Hiro can work out what to say, Callaghan sets the phone onto its receiver, clambers to his feet, and allows the guard to guide him from the room.

After he leaves, Hiro sits for a full minute, staring at the door into which Callaghan disappeared. A wave of relief washes over him, the same shaky, exhilarated feeling he gets once the stress drains away after he survives another presentation.

But it's more than that. It's not like he _needed_ Callaghan's permission to move on, and he definitely hadn't come here expecting it. Even so, hearing the professor's words somehow helped.

Hiro rests his forehead on his palm. It's a real stretch to call Callaghan a good man, not after all he's done. And Hiro still can't get past the sense of being strung along or played like a pawn somehow, nor does he understand what Callaghan was hoping to get out of the conversation in the end. But Hiro thinks he might have seen a hint of the man Callaghan used to be. The man Tadashi had once come to trust.

"Hiro?" a voice says, causing him to jump. He turns to find Baymax at his elbow, the robot's head tilted in curiosity. "The meeting appears to have come to an end. Are you alright?"

Hiro realizes that he has been sitting frozen for a few minutes. The phone is still in his hand. He drops it into the receiver and swivels on the seat to face Baymax. "I'm okay," he replies quietly. "Ready to go?"

The robot nods, and Hiro climbs to his feet. With one last glance through the window, Hiro turns away and leads Baymax toward the door, pausing to sign out at the desk.

The walk out of the prison passes in amiable silence. When the guards let them through the front doors, they find the day outside to have become gray and overcast, a light mist clinging to the grassy fields and fences that line the perimeter. The asphalt under Hiro's feet is slick with recent rain.

The prison gate is a few minutes' walk from the nearest bus stop. Hiro has the feeling that Baymax, though curious, is prepared to let him sort through his thoughts in silence for a while, at least until Hiro strikes up a conversation on his own. He smiles, grateful for the indulgence, but he finds to his surprise that he doesn't really need it. "Wanna hear how it went?"

"Of course," Baymax replies instantly, turning his head to face Hiro as the robot waddles at his side. "I must admit that I have been wondering about the outcome. Do you feel as though the meeting was beneficial?"

Hiro opens his mouth, pauses, then smiles. "Too soon to say," he replies at last. "But I think it's a good start."

.

.

.

 **A/N:** Wow, this chapter turned out to be one block of conversation. But it seems like everyone had a lot to work through :-)

If you stuck it out, drop me a line to let me know what you thought!

Peace,

ket


	4. Part Four

.

 **Part Four**

.

 _Abigail_

.

It's two days before Abigail sees Hiro again.

The lengthening shadows of late afternoon have begun to crawl across the streets of San Fransokyo. While it's early enough for crowds of workers to cluster around the monorail terminals, the city seems somehow quieter and emptier than usual.

Abigail thinks it's got something to do with the weather: the short winter day has brought a steady bluster of wind from the direction of the bay, and it's the first truly crisp and cold weather they've had all year. Some of the people she passes aren't prepared for the shift in temperature, if their light attire is anything to go by, and they scurry to their destinations with faint expressions of misery plastered on their faces, some of them pausing for a breath of warm air in the cafes and boutiques that line the roads of shopping district.

Having bundled up well, Abigail watches them go with a mixture of amusement and unconcern. She's been looking forward to an evening walk all day, especially after spending most of the morning split between her father and their lawyers. Walking—no matter how difficult it is or how slowly she trudges on weakened legs—has always helped her clear her mind, and clarity is something she can use right now.

As it turns out, she was right about the appeal, anyway. Her lawyers think that it would be better to leave Hiro Hamada out of things altogether. There's no telling what damage he could do to their case if he goes off script, they say, and her father doesn't need any bad PR at this point.

 _Any_ more _bad PR,_ she always wants to correct them, but she doesn't.

And the truth is that she's got more than enough on her plate without trying to press Hiro into doing something he obviously has every right not to want to do. With the reams of paperwork to sift through and fill out, she doesn't have the time to waste on the kind of volatile conversation she and Hiro had. Robert Callaghan has a host of strikes against him in the eyes of the prefecture, and whittling his sentence down from life to a few decades will probably take a small miracle. If it even matters much in the long run.

 _It's probably better that way,_ she thinks, blowing onto her fingers to warm them. _Sometimes, I don't recognize him anymore. I don't even know how he could have done it._ The thought still cuts her deeply, enough to make her wonder whether she's doing the right thing. Whether there _is_ a right thing to be done.

But the truth is that she resigned herself to a life without her father a long time ago. No matter what they decide to do in the appeal, the fact is that Robert Callaghan is going to spend the rest of his life locked away in prison, and there's not much that she or anyone else can do. The consequences of his actions have earned him his new quarters, and he'll have to learn to live in them.

In the meantime, Hiro has become the latest entry in the steadily growing list of things she and her father have implicitly agreed never to discuss. Her father has always had a hard time seeing her cry, and she thinks their conversation has probably scared him away from the subject of the Hamada family for good. Which is just as well, because Abigail doesn't think she can take any more of it, talking about Hiro with her father or about her father with Hiro.

As she passes Haitaya Avenue, where the name-brand boutiques and restaurants of the shopping district transition into neighborhood stores and cafes, throngs of hungry commuters wander away from the busy intersection. It's the food trucks and street vendors that draw them in, their lighted displays boasting a wealth of flavors and cuisines. The hodgepodge of contrasting smells matches the menus, which advertise gafflower fritters and tofu curry, pork belly buns and miso greens, spiced pho and lemongrass chicken, soybean sauce and kimchi tacos.

The combinations make Abigail nauseous. The new medicine regimen her PT has put her on has been affecting her appetite, and the smells of the evening meals seem almost pungent. She turns away from the busy street, having been keeping an eye out for a quieter path anyway, and steps down a side alley. Her feet move on their own accord, allowing her to meander lazily without much distraction.

She doesn't intend to arrive at Lucky Cat Cafe, not by any conscious decision. But she finds herself there regardless, standing on the pavement across the street to listen to its hanging wind chimes ring in the breeze, to stare at the deep blue sky just beyond its dark, tiled roof and winding turret. The golden light from its windows spills in perfect rectangles across the sidewalk.

Abigail pulls her coat tight around her shoulders, wondering what to do. Then she realizes that it's foolish to assume Hiro's inside at all.

After waiting for the cable car to pass, Abigail crosses the street for a closer look inside, staying close to the edge of the window to keep out of sight as much as possible. _Hm. Where's Mama Bear?_ she wonders, remembering the woman who had stared so coldly when she'd first explained that she wanted to talk to Hiro. _Ah,_ she thinks, spotting the brunette all the way in the back. Ms. Hamada is balancing an almost absurd number of dishes on her tray, and she seems to be deep in conversation with an older couple.

Hiro's robot is inside too, she realizes suddenly. At this angle, she can see its balloon-like bulk huddled in a seat in the corner of the room. And where the robot is, there's Hiro. The kid is certainly acting his age today: he crouches on his chair rather than sitting on it, and he leans over to grin at something his robot holds in its hand.

Abigail cranes her head for a better look. Despite her distance, the movement catches Hiro's eye, and he turns to her suddenly, a look of surprise crossing his face before sweeping into something unreadable. Abigail doesn't move to leave, just crosses her arms and leans her shoulder against the cold windowpane.

After a moment of staring, Hiro abruptly breaks into a wry smile, shaking his head as though they've shared an inside joke. He gestures for her to come in and then turns away.

Frowning, Abigail considers her options. She hadn't really meant to come here—and doesn't even know what she can possibly say to Hiro, especially since she still feels so badly about their first meeting. Still, at this point, he's already seen her, so there's not much point in leaving. She walks over to the door and steps inside. A bell jingles as she enters, and a thick cloud of warmth wafts over her; it's only now that she realizes how cold she really was outside in the winter air. The cafe is warm and brightly lit and ringing with noise, a buzz of laughter and conversation and the gentle clink of plates and silverware.

She makes her way across the room to Hiro. Staring from outside the window, it had been impossible to see the entirety of their table, so it's only now that she realizes that Hiro and his robot are engaged in some sort of card game with a third player, an elderly woman with a sheet of slate grey hair covered by an electric blue cloche hat.

"...that the purpose of the game is difficult for me to understand," the robot is saying in its clipped, polite tones. It holds some cards in an awkward jumble, tilting them this way and that with clumsy fingers as if in an attempt to make sense of a complex code.

"I'm _trying_ to tell you you're understanding it right, Baymax," Hiro replies, watching the robot's confused movements with no small amount of amusement. "The whole point of the game is to lie about which cards you have, or how many you're putting down or whatever."

"That seems...unproductive," the robot states, and Abigail's not sure how it's possible, but she swears she can hear a note of bewilderment in its tone now.

Hiro nods politely at Abigail's approach. The woman seated beside them, who wears a flamboyant fur coat in lime green, suddenly groans, her leathery skin stretching into a smile. "Baymax, kiddo, _most_ games are unproductive. It's the definition of a game. You gotta roll with it. It's your turn now—you got sevens."

Abigail stands awkwardly for a moment, hands in her pockets, as Hiro and the woman watch the robot's movements with bated breath. Baymax looks at his cards and then back up at the pair of them, as if waiting for assistance, but they give him none. Finally, he shuffles the few cards he holds and then lays them all face down on the pile in the middle of the table.

"Four sevens," Baymax says, sounding pleased. The words are barely out of his mouth—or vocal box or whatever it is—before the woman groans again, more loudly than before. Hiro puts his head in his hands. "Was that not an accurate response?"

It takes a moment for Abigail to realize that Hiro's shoulders are shaking with muffled laughter. After a moment, he brings himself to look up, his cheeks flushed with amusement. "It might be if you weren't such a bad liar, Baymax," Hiro replies cheerfully. "I only have two cards left, and Mrs. Matsuda has three. The chances of your last four cards being the exact cards you need are, like...astronomical."

"Not exactly," Baymax replies. "In fact, the odds are—"

Hiro waves his arm before the robot can continue. "Okay, okay. You know what I mean."

"Can I call BS? Is that a legal move now?" Mrs. Matsuda asks, raising one greyed brow. She flips over his cards to find that none of them are, in fact, sevens.

"The whole point is to lie in a way that's _believable._ And to not sound so...happy about it," Hiro adds, smiling at the robot. "That might help."

"I see," the robot replies. It stares at the pile of cards.

The woman pats Baymax's arm. "It comes with time, kid." She turns to Hiro "My move? Or are you going to be polite and introduce your guest?"

"Geez, give me like two seconds," Hiro grins. "Mrs. Matsuda, this is Abigail Callaghan. She's…" Abruptly, he pauses, and if the subject weren't quite so serious, Abigail might have laughed: how are you supposed to introduce the daughter of your brother's killer, anyway? "She's a researcher who worked on some of the technology Baymax and I dealt with recently. Abigail, this is Mrs. Matsuda. She's a friend of the family."

"Pleasure," Mrs. Matsuda says, nodding warmly at Abigail. "Well, go be entertaining," she says to Hiro. "Leave an old woman all alone in here."

Hiro laughs, getting to his feet. "You were just saying you needed a break from all this fun anyway. Actually," he adds thoughtfully, peeking toward the back of the cafe, "do you think you can tell Aunt Cass we're going out? I think she'll be fine with it, but just in case. It's a school night, and...you know how she is." A quick glance in Abigail's direction suggests that the late hour probably isn't the only thing Hiro's aunt might have a problem with.

"So she hears it from someone else and you don't have to deal with it," Mrs. Matsuda translates gleefully. "I like it. Long as you cover for me on my next smoke break. You know how she is."

Hiro opens his mouth to reply, but his robot speaks up first. "Hiro will not cover you on your next smoke break. You have agreed to limit your cigarettes to four in an attempt to stop smoking altogether." Baymax's eyes whirr a little. _A scan?_ Abigail wonders. "You have reached that number. It would be in the best interest of your health for there to be no more smoke breaks." After a beat, Hiro nods in agreement, his face serious.

Mrs. Matsuda sighs, but not unhappily. "Alright, alright. Always pestering me about something, you are. Now, skedaddle." She waves her arms at them and then gathers up the cards to shuffle them.

Obediently, Hiro turns to face Abigail. "Wanna go for a walk?" he suggests.

"Sure," Abigail replies, shrugging.

They start toward the door, but the robot gently tugs the back of Hiro's shirt. "I believe this evening's weather warrants a coat, Hiro," it explains.

"Yeah, yeah," Hiro grumbles good-naturedly, and, after checking that his aunt is preoccupied at a table, he trudges through the crowded room to the door in the back.

Once he's gone, Abigail gives the robot a sidelong look. "You're a regular boy scout, aren't you?"

"I do not believe that is an accurate representation of my status, no," replies Baymax, turning to face her. It's amazing how it manages to look both interested and curious with such a simplified body structure and minimal facial features.

"Sorry. I didn't mean it literally," she explains.

"Ah. It was an _expression?_ "

Abigail nods, watching it waddle in place a little. She wonders if it's as curious about her as she is about it. "So you play cards with Hiro?" she asks, trying not to make her tone sound as though she's talking to a small child.

"Infrequently, yes," the robot replies. "However, this particular game is new to me. It is one Hiro has termed 'BS.' He believes that teaching it to me will help me to learn how to better lie when needed. This is a skill area in which I am unfortunately lacking, as it is difficult to read and emulate the subtle nuances of facial expression while rendering a believable fiction."

She frowns. "Why's he trying to teach you how to lie?"

"As his medical healthcare professional, it is important that I be able to keep some of Hiro's behaviors and health concerns private. This would be far easier for me to do if I were able to offer a polite lie in response to a question, rather than merely refraining from speaking altogether." As she processes this, the robot adds: "In addition, the mysteries of human _expression_ are fascinating to me. I believe Hiro understands this and indulges my curiosity when he is able."

"Ah, got it. So it's sort of...a study in human behavior?"

"Exactly," says Hiro from behind her. He is attempting to pull on a dark blue coat, pushing one arm through a tangled sleeve. Baymax wordlessly holds the end of it for him so Hiro can pull it all the way on. The boy smiles and raps his knuckles against Baymax's matte exterior. "Anyway, another part of it is that it's just fun to play the game," Hiro explains to her as he steps outside and holds the door open for both of them to exit. In the past few minutes, Abigail has become so accustomed to the warmth of the cafe that the temperature outside feels colder than before, hitting her full in the face. She zips her coat up all the way, grateful to be back in warm, practical pants rather than a dress.

Hiro pulls his coat around him more tightly as well, guiding them slowly down the street. "But you always learn _really_ fast," he adds to the robot, and then he turns to Abigail. "Truth is, in like thirty more minutes of playing, I'll never be able to beat him again...but only in that _one_ game. He's only been able to lie at cards so far, because the rules are so simple and the lies aren't complicated at all. But next time Aunt Cass asks why I stayed out so late, Baymax won't be able to come up with anything."

"I did apologize for that," Baymax states.

"Yeah, I guess you did," Hiro allows, smiling. Then he shakes his head. "Anyway. I guess you didn't come out here to talk to us about card games?"

The sudden shift in conversation takes Abigail by surprise; having been lost in the details of their discussion, she scrambles to recall that she is, in fact, here for no particular reason other than a mild feeling that there is something left unfinished between them. "Oh. Right," she says. "I mean, I didn't come to...you know, pressure you more. I guess...I guess I just came to apologize again. I don't know."

Hiro scrutinizes her for a minute out of the corner of his eye, and then he shrugs dismissively. "It's fine. You already said."

They cross the cable car tracks, both Abigail and Baymax having implicitly decided to follow Hiro, who leads them uphill toward the tree-lined boutiques of Ueno Heights. Off in the distance is the low hum of traffic just beginning to pick up for the evening rush, the whine of monorail brakes, a motorcycle engine roaring. Farther off, Abigail can just make out the blare of a foghorn somewhere out on the darkening bay.

Baymax moves slowly behind them, slowly enough that Abigail thinks Hiro is probably slowing his stride to allow the robot to keep up. She's grateful for it, because her legs already felt tired from her walk earlier, and a more strenuous pace would have been hard for her to follow.

"I think maybe I wasn't really ready to hear what you were saying," Hiro tells her abruptly, just when she begins to think that the rest of their walk will be spent in silence. "I didn't want to hear about your dad at all, so I needed you to…just go away, you know?"

"But you ended up visiting him anyway," Abigail replies slowly after a moment, trudging along at his side. "What happened?"

Hiro doesn't answer right away. The bare brambles of a holly bush scrape against the side of his coat as he passes. "I didn't know I was going to do it until I did," he admits finally. "But I think in a way I needed it. He's been on my mind for a while."

Abigail nods thoughtfully. As they come to the crest of the hill, the wind picks up, sweeping her bangs into her face, and she pulls them behind her ears. She finds herself torn between allowing Hiro to keep his privacy and prying into their conversation. It's her dad, after all. "What did you guys talk about?" she asks casually.

"Tadashi," Hiro replies. He's a step ahead of her now, maybe on purpose, and she can't make out his expression. His hands are balled into fists in the pockets of his coat. "About how...he didn't mean the things he said about my brother, how he was a good student. About what my brother would have wanted me to do. Maybe." He pauses, considering, and then turns to her. "But I'm not going to help with the whole legal thing—I mean, your dad asked, but I'm not going to..."

"I didn't expect it. I'm just glad you two talked."

"Me too," Hiro responds. He doesn't say it sarcastically, like she might have thought he would, though his mouth dips into a slight frown. Abigail is well aware that there must have been more to the conversation, enough to cause the somber look on the boy's face—but there's only so much prying she'll allow herself to do. Some secrets will have to stay with Hiro.

"For what it's worth, I think...no matter what happens, the appeal's not likely to pull through. Maybe not even if you would have testified. He's done too much," she adds, trying to ignore the irony in saying these words to someone whose brother died through her father's actions, in how little those words cover the truth. "And I think any jury can see it. It's taken me a while to see it, too, but I think my dad needs to stay where he is. He's not—he's not in the right state of mind. I don't know if he ever will be again, but I think for now...state rehab might be the best thing for him."

Hiro nods, a grateful expression on his face. But to her relief, he drops the subject. It's one thing for _her_ to admit that her father needs help, and it's another to hear it from the mouth of a stranger to the family. It feels like it would have been wrong to allow Hiro or anyone else to insult him, and despite the fact that she knows he deserves curses and spite and more, it leaves an acidic taste in her mouth. _Thanks for putting me in this position, Dad,_ she thinks bitterly. _Getting to hear about all the worst parts of you from people who really ought to know._ She's well aware that she's going to have to work hard to curb her protective instincts in the coming days, because the terrible things the city's plaintiffs say about her father will probably be well deserved.

Still, whether or not her father told Hiro what he wanted to hear, Abigail thinks that he does look lighter somehow. At any rate, his shoulders straighten after a minute, and the tension slowly begins to ease away.

"You are fatigued," Baymax says suddenly. She starts, having half-forgotten that the robot was there at all. "The muscle mass in your legs is significantly less than the ideal range for your body type, likely due to several months spent in zero gravity. Your muscles are suffering a slight buildup of lactic acid, which contributes to fatigue, shakiness, and even cramping."

Now that he says it, Abigail does feel the slightest of quivers in her left leg.

Hiro has turned to face her. "Why didn't you say so?"

"It's nothing _serious,_ " she says in embarrassment. "I just can't keep up like I used to."

"Might I recommend a short break?" Baymax replies. "There is a bench at the top of the hill."

Feeling a little sullen in spite of herself at the revelation of her weakness, Abigail only nods in agreement, and they make their way uphill. Once they reach the slight ridge, the view nearly causes her breath to catch in her throat. The silver rails of the cable car tracks slant away, lining the broad avenue that leads toward the waters of the bay a few miles off and far below them. It seems like the entirety of the city lies at their feet, glimmers of light just beginning to flicker into being in the windows of homes and buildings. The three of them have arrived just in time to catch the sunset at its most spectacular, all fiery oranges and glowing pinks that fade into the deepening violet of the twilight sky behind. Clouds swirl in feathery spirals behind the silhouette of the Kingeto Bridge, which casts a broad shadow over the darkening bay.

The promised bench sits next to the cable car stop. Abigail drops into it at once, feeling nauseated by the sunset's colors, which seem to curl into flowery, cotton-candy fractals if she stares for too long. She closes her eyes and orients herself on the edge of the seat, ensuring that she'll have to turn away from the sunset to talk to Hiro.

The boy and his robot sit beside her, both of them staring into the sky, though not in the direction she'd have expected. Their expressions—or Hiro's at least, since it's hard to read the robot's—are faintly wistful. She follows their gazes to the koi dirigibles, which float in the air like multicolored balloons, a small cluster of them tugging gently at their tethers in the wind.

"This is the best time of day," Hiro explains, no doubt realizing that she's searching for whatever has caught their attention.

Baymax nods earnestly. "It is also my favorite time of day. I enjoy flying in the evenings."

" _Fly_ ing?" Abigail parrots.

Hiro, hiding a smile with one hand, lightly punches Baymax's stomach with the other. "Lies, remember?" he says to the robot. Then, to Abigail, "Keep it quiet, okay? But Baymax is flight-equipped."

"Flying. Okay," she says, wondering why anyone would want to keep that quiet. "Wait, _fly_ ing? That's—how?" She leans forward, craning her head to look past Hiro at his robot. There are no obvious slots for wings or propellers, and she wonders if they're joking.

"I have thrusters," Baymax explains helpfully, lifting his foot to reveal a small circle at the bottom of it. As she watches, it slides open to reveal what appears to be a simple electric thruster, similar to the ones she'd had in the pod.

"Holy shit," Abigail says, flummoxed. "That's... _incredible._ You've tested it before? And your aunt _lets_ you fly on your robot?"

Hiro snorts. "I can't imagine anything Aunt Cass would be _less_ okay with. She'd probably kill me."

Baymax tilts his head thoughtfully for a moment. "I do not believe your Aunt Cass would, in fact, kill you if she knew. In the past, she has been fairly accepting of your transgressions. Consider that she only gently rebuked you when you resumed bot fighting after you and Tadashi were jailed."

"Yeah, but that was only…well. It's hard to stop, sometimes," Hiro replies, squirming in discomfort. "Besides, it was right after Tadashi, and she knew I was messed up."

The conversation has veered into waters that clearly make Hiro uncomfortable, so Abigail tries to adjust their course a bit. "I actually used to bot fight, too. When I was younger."

Hiro, seeming grateful for the lifeline, offers a slanted smile. "I think I heard Professor Callaghan mention that way back when," he replies diplomatically. Then he scrutinizes her. "You don't…really seem like the type. No offense."

A surprised laugh escapes her. "I guess I really don't anymore, do I? But yeah, I used to get in a lot of trouble for it when I was a kid. I've always liked things that were…well, dangerous. Exciting. The same things that got me hooked on what Silent Sparrow was promising.

"But bot fighting…I was really good at it. I was a lot like you, actually: way smart for my age, didn't really hang out with other kids in my peer group, a little too reckless for my own good. Of course, having a healthcare companion to watch my back might have helped some," she adds, nodding at Baymax, who continues to stare with his unfathomable eyes. "I guess with my dad enforcing my education and _everything_ really strictly, I needed a little rebellion every now and then. My mom and dad were very divided about the whole thing, though. Even though I was trying to catch Dad's attention with the bot fighting, he didn't really care that I did it." She can smile about it now, laugh even, but back then it had cut like a knife. "My mom was frantic. She was sure I was going down 'the wrong path,' or that the Metropol was going to find me gutted in an alleyway somewhere one night."

Maybe because of the cold breeze, Hiro pulls his legs up to sit like a little kid, folding them up to his chest and crossing his arms over his knees. "Did you ever get caught for it? Or did your mom make you stop?"

Abigail frowns thoughtfully. "She couldn't. Not really. Mom was…I guess she was kind of the pushover half of my parents, very laid back and outgoing, and always kind. To _everyone_. Mostly, she got Dad and I to do what she wanted because it made us feel really guilty whenever she was sad or upset, you know? But even that wasn't enough to stop me—I was just a stupid kid."

She rubs the back of her neck, remembering that Hiro's unwillingness to stop venturing out for bot meant he could also probably be called "a stupid kid." If he notices the potential slight, he doesn't react. "Anyway, the reason I stopped was...she came to pick me up one night, all the way out in Setsuzoku. She was so worried she'd actually slipped one of my dad's trackers into my coat. I was just ending a fight, and the crowd was a little…I mean, you know Setsuzoku."

Hiro nods sagely. "Tadashi used to get on my back for going out there, 'cause there were always news stories about gambling and drug trafficking arrests. Armed robbery and other stuff too, sometimes. Not the best area for bot fighting."

"Exactly. And being a kid alone there at night...well, it probably wasn't the best idea. Anyway, some guys started giving my mom a hard time, and that's when I noticed her. I sicced my bot on them so we could get away, and we ran to the car. I remember her hands were shaking so much she had a hard time getting it into gear, and she was quiet the whole way home. I think she was really scared. I just remember that when we pulled up to the driveway, she turned to me and said, 'I hate this. I don't like going there. But if you go out again, I'll worry about you. And I'd rather follow you than worry about you on my own all night.'

"And that was when I stopped. Because it seemed crazy to me, that she would do something like that just because she was worried, even when my dad couldn't be bothered to…"

She shakes her head, feeling a little silly for offering up so much.

"Did you stop just like that?" Hiro asks when she doesn't continue, head tilted in curiosity. "Did your dad ever...I don't know, talk to you about it? About how dangerous it was?"

"Never. I think in his mind, my mom had taken care of it. And I'd never really had anything like that happen to me before," Abigail replies slowly. "Before that, I'd always felt kind of...immortal. You know, like bad things only happened to other people, not to me. When I saw how scared my mom was, for herself but also for me, I guess I realized how stupid all of it was. How I was putting myself in danger to get back at my dad, but all I was doing was scaring the shit out of my mom."

She leans back, feeling the hard bench against her shoulder blades. "That...things didn't really change between me and my dad on the surface; I still did everything he asked and threw myself into studies and experiments, but that was when I stopped trying to impress him. I stopped almost killing myself to get him to look at me. That was when things became different between my mom and I. Up until she died, she was the one I really counted on for everything, especially whenever I felt like I didn't measure up enough for dad. She was just...it was then that I saw how crazy she really was," Abigail adds with a snort. "And after that, she meant everything to me."

Hiro has an earnest, wistful look on his face. "She sounds a lot like Tasashi. He came after me a couple of times, just to be sure I was okay, and to get it into my thick head that I shouldn't be going out alone. Once he came all the way to Kamagasaki District, actually—almost got his face smashed in by this huge guy trying to pull me into a fight. Before Baymax, Tadashi was my healthcare companion," he adds, grinning. "He did a good job, considering that he didn't have all the psychology stuff in him, so he couldn't psych me out of doing crazy like Baymax can. Sometimes."

Abigail raises her eyebrows curiously at Baymax, who holds up a finger to interject. "In many ways, I am learning that the field of psychology is more of an art than a science in several respects," the robot says. "While I can propose medical advice with a fairly fixed rate of success, much of psychology depends on understanding the subtle nuances of emotion, sensation, and self-image. There is much for me to learn before I can consider myself to be truly helpful in that respect," he explains modestly.

Hiro leans against the robot's stomach, his elbow digging into the vinyl. "You're already really helpful, Baymax. Trust me." He doesn't look at the robot in spite of his sincere tone. Baymax's eyes seem to fill with an odd sort of fondness.

"Blessed Marie Curie," Abigail exclaims with a grin, resting her chin on her fist. "Is there anything you didn't build this robot to do?"

Hiro huffs out a laugh. "No, Tadashi did a good job, so Baymax does everything, really. And anything he doesn't do but wants to learn, we can probably figure out how to build it or make it happen."

"It's so unreal," she murmurs offhandedly. "Back when I first got into robotics, I never would have thought anyone could possibly build a bot _this_ advanced within our lifetime, with such lifelike personality software—one capable of learning new skills and even human interactions so quickly."

"I believe 'quickly' may be an overstatement in some respects," the robot notes when she pauses. "Though I have a good teacher. Which is an _expression_ ," he adds. "In reality, my teacher is Hiro."

Hiro elbows him again. "We're working on the human interactions part," he says, smiling. "But it's the fun kind of work." The robot's simple facial structure somehow manages to convey its shared amusement.

"It kind of puts me to shame that you've done all this at your age," she says, grinning. "This is the kind of thing I signed on for originally, you know. Back when I first joined the Silent Sparrow project. I was going to make amazing things, change the world…" she snorts. "That didn't happen, obviously."

"It could still happen, could it not?" wonders Baymax.

She shrugs slowly, considering. Hiro's obvious joy at the mention of future projects and the easy camaraderie he has with his robot have sparked an idea, but she's not sure how plausible it is. "Who knows? Maybe one day. I mean to work on it. But if it does happen, it'll take a while. I don't have the team of great friends you have," she tells Hiro, who smiles a little, maybe by instinct, at the mention of them. "Not anymore. I was just starting to work with NASA before all of this went down, but they won't touch me now—there's no telling what other side effects the portal might have had on my body, and having a health crisis in space would be a PR nightmare." She snorts, though she understands where they're coming from. "Other than that, my team used to be my dad and Alistair, and some of the others at the company, too, I guess. And for obvious reasons, I'm not going to be tackling any big projects with any of them in the near future."

She hesitates. The thought she's circling around is crazy. She feels happy and almost drunk, maybe because it's been ages since she's had a genuine conversation about all of this, her goals and her interests, ages since she's talked about anything besides therapy and the appeal and "the incident." Maybe it's stupid to be considering something this big with Hiro and his robot—Alistair and her father and her old colleagues might have thought she was crazy for even considering it—but Abigail doesn't care. It's about time she spoke with someone she felt she could really trust.

"The point is," she says, taking a deep breath to let her words out quickly, "that I'm just about to win a shit ton of money on a settlement. Our lawyers are suing Krei Tech Industries on my behalf. After the whole _losing me in a secret portal_ thing," she clarifies at Hiro's bewildered look. "It's not done yet, but there's no way it won't pull through, not after what they did. So I'll have all the resources I need. Financially, at least. And the goal isto eventually jump back into engineering once I figure out where to get started. I want to do things on my own terms, without having Krei Tech throwing red tape over every project I come up with or vetoing projects that don't make sense for shareholders. I want to finance my own work so I don't have to answer to anyone else.

"And I have a project already. I've been wanting to figure out a way to speed up...this whole process," she adds, making a sweeping gesture to her legs to encompass _the shit end of the stick that is healing from muscle loss._ "PT has a long way to go before it's really efficient, so I thought I could start there."

Hiro is nodding slowly, thoughtfully. She's not sure whether her next words are a gamble or not, but they're worth a shot, at least. "If you're interested...I could probably use a consultant from time to time. Nothing strenuous, obviously, since you're still in school. But you seem like you have a better background with the ins and outs of health engineering than just about anyone I know. And I...I'd probably trust you more than most people," she adds before she can take it back, considering her own unwillingness to pair with any of her past colleagues involved in Krei Tech Industries.

It's a lot to pile on anyone all at once, and she almost instantly regrets not thinking it all the way through. With his track record for ingenuity, Hiro would be a great ally to have, and his obvious morals meant he was the sort of person who could be trusted: after all, he'd already saved her life once. It would be kind of a shame to miss out on his talents because she hasn't figured out how to choose her words carefully enough. And beyond that, it would be a shame to miss out on the companionship.

As it turns out, though, she has nothing to worry about. Hiro stares at her for a few seconds, his eyebrows creeping up his forehead. "Are you serious?"

"Dead serious," she replies, still wary. "It's best not to work in a void—that's what Alistair always used to tell me whenever I tried to go off and do my own thing. Feedback's essential and whatever. So even if you only have time to come by every now and then to check everything out and give the work a once-over, it'll be more than enough."

A smile stretches onto Hiro's face. "That sounds _awesome!_ " he exclaims. "That's one of the things I'm—we're—interested in. Health stuff. Helping people. Making awesome things. We get to do a lot of stuff at SFIT, but there's only so much research and projects they'll let you do before they have to put a cap on it the funding...and there are a lot of cool ideas we don't have the chance to work on," he adds, self-consciously running a hand through his hair.

Abigail returns his smile, wondering why she'd felt so nervous in the first place. "It's a deal, then," she says. "Let's help people and make some awesome things together." She shifts on the bench, catching a glimpse of the last violent pinks of the sunset in the corner of her vision. She closes her eyes. Before she can stop herself, she adds quietly, "Besides, I think I'm about ready for some low-key projects about now. I need a break from the kind of thing where you potentially break your neck if things go wrong."

The bench moves as Hiro repositions himself. There's a long, thoughtful pause. "It must have been really bad," he says finally, his voice quiet. "Being trapped in there all alone."

Abigail opens her eyes again, careful to tilt her head so she's looking away from the sunset. She wonders if Hiro's just empathizing, or if he's noticed the way the bright pastels of the sky make her feel anxious and bottled up still, the way the rolling clouds make her want to hide. It's only at sunset that she feels like this, when she's reminded so heavily of the soft fractals of the portal and the taste of her own desperation in those hours.

He seems to catch the direction of her thoughts. "What was it like?"

It would be easy to offer her customary platitudes to brush him off, but she catches herself. Hiro was right before: short of telling a therapist, it would probably be good for her to talk about how she feels with _someone,_ especially with someone like Hiro who saw it all firsthand.

Hiro, after all, went off to talk with her father and came back changed somehow—not necessarily lighter, but changed in some small and subtle way. He seems a little more certain of himself, a little less wary around her.

But even if it would help, she finds that she can't manage the words. _I'll work up to it,_ she thinks to herself. _It's...it should be weird to talk about this with a kid, but I think he's the type of person who's patient enough to wait._

"Not now," she says apologetically. "It's hard to talk about it. But ask me again sometime."

Hiro's mouth twists in a way that indicates that he doesn't understand, but he shrugs and smiles anyway. "'Kay. I will," he promises. After a moment, he stretches his arms overhead, yawning. "Ready to go back?"

Abigail nods, pushing herself slowly onto her feet. Baymax, already at her side, holds out a rubbery appendage so she can grab it to steady herself. "Let's get outta here," she says.

Together, they turn their backs on the dying sunset to face the city, stepping downhill the way that they came. In this position, with the colors somewhere behind her and the presence of Hiro and Baymax at her side, Abigail feels her anxiety seep away. The oncoming darkness of twilight creeps through the streets of San Fransokyo, whose strings of orange lanterns are just beginning to light in the evening breeze.

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 **End**

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 **A/N:** With all of the serious topics, I guess this story could have gotten really angsty, but I'm too into warm fuzzies to end on a sour note.

There are a few more short stories to come in this series, including a Tadashi-centric prequel I'm currently working on...mostly because I just wanted to write Tadashi really badly ;-) 'Till then, thanks for reviewing/following/favoriting, and see you next time!

Happy reading,

ket


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